


Invader Zim and the Kri Society

by turbomun



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, Zim is an Irken adolescent, also ZADR, honestly the ship is not THAT important but yall can't say i didn't warn you, irken ocs, like 4 of them, only the show is canon, the comics are NOT canon!!, unfinished episodes are PARTIALLY canon, very soft same-age sfw ZADR but still ZADR
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turbomun/pseuds/turbomun
Summary: It's the summer after the whole Florpus fiasco. Dib just wants to enjoy his summer vacation, but his dad still doesn't believe him about aliens, Zim has decided to annoy him nonstop in the absence of any communication from the Tallest, and oh yeah: a spaceship full of other Irkens just landed in the woods. They call themselves the Kri Society, and their leader is determined to change Irk for the better or die trying. Dib is all too eager to come along for the ride, but he might get more than he bargained for on this space trip...
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 115





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So like. After being dragged kicking and screaming into this fandom, I had no idea that Zadr was a controversial ship? Some people say it's pedophilia because they see Zim as an adult, but he has no confirmed canon age, and I just can't see him that way. But just to be on the safe side: THIS FIC CONTAINS ZADR. A lot of other stuff too, but also Zadr. They're around the same age, it's all strictly SFW, but if you're violently opposed to Zadr, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BACK OUT.
> 
> ...anyone still here? Okay, so, if you're not violently opposed to Zadr, even if you don't ship it, I really hope you'll stick around. There's way more to this story than just that one relationship. Plus it's my first Invader Zim fanfic, and I'd really love your feedback on it so that I can continue to improve.
> 
> The OCs in this story belong to myself, my friend Jordan, and my fiancee Rafe (neither of whom have AO3 accounts). Everybody is used with permission, except the canon characters, 'cause I really don't think Jhonen would approve of this lmao

As Mala dropped through a shaft towards the underside of Irk, she felt a familiar combination of relief and trepidation. Relief because she was leaving the cutthroat world of Irken politics behind, if only for a little while; trepidation because of the deeply ingrained warning that she was not supposed to be here.

_No grown Irken shall have contact with any smeet prior to their emergence from the larval phase._

There was a guard drone stationed at the bottom of the little-used elevator. It seemed to bristle as she stepped out in front of it, passing an information beam over her to interrogate her, then discovered from her PAK that she had special authorization from Tallest Miyuki to be here. It retreated with what she imagined was surprise.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “I won’t be back for a while after this.” As if it cared.

Access points to the reproductive and education facilities were so few and far between that every time she came here, she was pretty much forced to circumnavigate the entire area. She walked downhill, past the hatcheries, where smeets grew in tubes until it was time to decant them; past the upload chambers, where they were given their names, assignments, and the collective knowledge of all those who had come before them; and then into a seemingly endless corridor of doors placed at regular intervals, with an electronic sign beside each one that stated which particular group of young Irkens resided within. She entered the room labeled CRECHE-127AB without even glancing at its sign.

Inside the cavernous classroom, one hundred year-six smeets, all within one day of the same age, sat at individual desks, their heads encased in training visors as they worked their ways through countless war simulations.

127AB, like most creches, was destined for a lifetime of service in the Irken military. Most would end up as ordinary foot soldiers; a few would move on to become Elites, or possibly even Invaders; some might be shuffled into other roles, either because they showed flair in another field or, more likely, because they were being demoted for incompetence. But for now, they paid no attention to Mala, as was to be expected from well-functioning smeets. It served as a double layer of protection against familial bonds: mature Irkens were forbidden from making contact with children, and even if someone broke the rules and snuck down here, said children would have no instinct to interact with anything but their robotic creche-carers. Not a single child so much as glanced in her direction.

Except for one.

The very smallest member of the creche, sitting at the very last desk in the back of the room, had removed his visor almost before she’d finished walking through the door. His face lit up. “Mameen!” he exclaimed in a sort of loud whisper.

Mala smiled. “Zim.”

He scrambled out of his seat at once, pausing only to shove his closest neighbor (second smallest in the creche) and hiss, “Skoodge! Mameen’s here!” Then the two boys were stumbling over themselves to reach her, one fast and jerky, the other slow and plodding.

She obligingly knelt down to them, and Zim began to climb all over her. “Mameen, you were gone way too long this time!” he declared.

“It’s nice to see you too,” she chuckled. She came here as often as she could get away with, but being the immediate successor to the Tallest was an intense job, not to mention that she didn’t want to draw undue attention by abusing her privileges too often.

Zim settled down on her knee. “You should just stay here forever.”

“You know why I can’t do that, Zim.” Which didn’t stop him from asking every single time she visited. Zim was an attention-starved child.

Skoodge, always the more perceptive of the two boys, observed, “Mameen, you’re wearing different clothes today.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she agreed. Her tunic was the same rusty orange color as always, but most of the additional equipment had been stripped from her ensemble, leaving her with just her gloves, boots, and PAK. “This is my Invader uniform.”

Zim’s antennae perked. “Invader?”

“I thought you didn’t do that Invader stuff anymore,” said Skoodge.

“Not usually.” She toyed with the bead strung on her left antenna. “But we’re shorthanded this year, and apparently even the trainees we do have aren’t promising. So the Control Brains have asked me to tutor the new recruits, and possibly join the coming invasion if the need arises.”

Skoodge nodded at once, but after taking a moment to process that, Zim scowled. “Are you saying that you have to go away again?!”

“For a while,” Mala admitted. “I wanted to come and say goodbye before I left.”

Zim leapt off of her knee. “This is stupid! They should just let _me_ be an Invader. I could teach those trainees a thing or two!”

“Yes, well, you need to be of at least jute age to become an Invader.” She glanced up, trying to see if his outburst had attracted the attention of his creche-mates, but the other smeets appeared to be oblivious. “But I’m sure that you’ll be a fine Invader when you’re older.”

She tried to swallow down the guilt she felt at telling him that, because she wasn’t actually sure of it at all.

Something was very much wrong with Zim, far beyond him being so much smaller than the rest of his creche. His sense of individual identity was too strong, and yet he was also far too fixated on his interactions with others. He questioned the rules too often, and broke the rules even more often than that. He’d been synthesized from archived DNA, just like everyone else, but long-suppressed Irken instincts seemed to have surfaced in him somehow. When she first came down here, to Creche-127AB, he’d been the only one to notice her (although he’d almost immediately dragged Skoodge along with him) and right from the start, he had referred to her by that antiquated word, _Mameen_. It was exciting to see an Irken who was so out of the ordinary, but it was nerve-wracking, too. Irkens with a couple of quirks (like her) could survive and even thrive; Irkens who went against everything that the Empire stood for were invariably declared as defectives and permanently erased.

Actually, Zim probably should have been erased far earlier than his sixth year. He was only still around because Mala liked him, and because Tallest Miyuki, in turn, liked Mala. As long as he remained harmless, nobody was going to invoke the Tallest’s displeasure over a smeet.

(The now-infamous long blackout that had occurred on the day of his birth had always been suspected to be his doing…but Mala had successfully campaigned to block the Control Brains from doing a subpoena of his PAK, so nobody could prove it for certain.)

Zim was pouting, and Mala scooped him up and squeezed him tightly. She knew that she shouldn’t be encouraging his rebellious tendencies, but when she looked around at the Irken Empire, at what they were doing, what she was a part of…well, she couldn’t help but think that the more Irkens with a nonconformist streak, the better.

“It’s not fair,” he complained, making no attempt to dislodge himself from her arms. “We barely get to see you even when you’re here!”

“I know,” she said. “And believe me, I wish that I could spend more time with you boys, but we all have things that we have to do. I have to get going to Planet Devastus; you two have to stay here and train.”

“Bye, Mameen,” said Skoodge, who looked slightly downcast but wasn’t making a big production out of it like Zim. “Have a good trip.”

“When will you be back?” demanded Zim.

She set him down lightly on the ground. “I’m honestly not sure. It will depend on whether or not I have to take part in the invasion. Oh, don’t look at me like that – you know that you’ll see me again! In the meantime, please be on your best behavior. Skoodge, keep up those excellent simulator marks! And Zim…”

He looked directly into her face, his round red eyes fixed on her aristocratic green ones. She tried to think of a way to tell him to stay rebellious, stay nonconforming, but even if there hadn’t been electronic ears all over the place, that kind of thing was dangerous to say aloud. Any disquiet she felt had to be dealt with on the inside.

“Keep asking questions,” she finally said. “All right?”

He blinked. “Of course! I, Zim, will ask shmillions of questions while you’re gone!”

“Good.”

Reluctantly, she straightened up. “I had better get going now. Goodbye, boys! Mameen loves you!”

“We love you too, Mameen!” they called in unison.

She offered them both one last smile. Hearing them say that always gave her the warm fuzzies – a feeling that she tried to hold on to as she prepared to face her serious work once more.

* * *

At the port atop the Tallest Tower, where only the Elitest of Elites were permitted to dock their ships, Mala strapped herself into her voot cruiser. Her instruments were up-to-date and ready to go; the ship’s engine purred around her. She reached out to touch the comm screen. “Computer, open a connection to Tallest Miyuki.”

Miyuki’s face appeared almost at once, smiling her disarmingly gentle smile. “Mala! Have you taken off yet?”

“I’m about to. I’ll check in with you once I land on Devastus.”

“Of course, dear. Keep in touch – I’m always happy to hear from you. Now, you go and show those trainees what being an Irken Invader is really about! Make me proud!”

“Certainly, My Tallest.” The two of them were close enough to be on a first-name basis, but it never hurt to observe the formalities on official channels. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“And you’ll see me even sooner, I hope.”

“So do I.”

Mala disconnected the call and initiated her ship’s launch sequence. The computer was smart; it had learned enough from her that she hardly needed to do anything anymore. High Elites like herself always got the most advanced voots.

She had almost reached the edge of the atmosphere – her thoughts circling between the job ahead, her two unofficial children, and what she’d be working on after she returned – when the missile struck.

There was no warning – just a sudden punch of metal against metal, then the floor of the voot crumpling upwards. In half a second, she was pinned against the ceiling by an eruption of crushed metal, her pulse thumping in her throat, the engine audibly laboring; and then there was no sound but the whistling scream of the air as she plummeted downwards.

Mala struggled to eject herself through the windshield, but she couldn’t unpin her arms from her sides. She thought frantically: _This can’t be happening. I have weapons detection systems and automatic shields. Why didn’t I get an alert message? Why aren’t any alarms sounding now? Has someone sabotaged my ship? But who could have possibly—?_

And then: _Whoever just attacked me could have set me up. Because that missile came from Irk._

She’d always known that being the immediate successor to the Tallest was a dangerous position, maybe even more trouble than it was worth. Now she was being plunged back into the cutthroat world of Irken politics in the most literal way possible.

Mala cursed whoever was responsible for shooting her down, cursed the whole Irken Empire for creating a society where this kind of thing could happen so easily, and most of all cursed herself for never being brave enough to do anything about it. If she got out of this – no, _when_ she got out of this, she would never allow her life to end in such a dishonorable way – she needed to get serious about her vague ideas of reform. She had to create a safer place for her people…for her children.

_I hope that Zim keeps asking questions._

That was her last complete thought before the booming crunch of impact, the world lurching upside down, and finally, silent darkness.


	2. Your Best Frenemy

Dib Membrane jerked awake in his bed with the impression of having heard things smashing and shattering nearby. He almost relaxed, chalking it up to a lingering dream…and then, two seconds later, he realized why it almost certainly wasn’t.

 _Oh, great_.

He lurched out of bed, padding rapidly towards the stairs on bare feet. On the way, he passed Gaz, staring at him coldly from her bedroom doorway with an expression that said, _You’re responsible for waking me up way too early, and it’s summer vacation. Fix it._ Like he hadn’t done everything he could to prevent this.

In the living room, a familiar dog-suited robot was sitting on one of the built-in shelves above the couch, excitedly greeting the ceramic knick-knacks placed up there for decoration. Said robot was currently focusing on an inexplicable figurine of a fish with wings. “HI, FISHY!” the robot exclaimed, bending down to make eye contact with it. “Is you gonna fly?! I help!” With that, he flung it straight at the floor, where it predictably splintered into pieces.

The room’s other occupant scowled. “GIR! Stop throwing those ridiculous Earth trinkets at me! I’m trying to complete an assessment of the Membrane household’s technological capabilities!” He poked at a tablet of some sort that had emerged from the dome-shaped contraption on his back. “Hmm…interesting. This is surprisingly advanced…”

Then they both looked up and saw who was staring at them, none too impressed.

“Hi Mary!” exclaimed Gir, waving excitedly, then grabbing a book off the shelf and chucking it at Dib’s head. Dib sidestepped, but still felt it graze against his ear before it plopped on the ground beside him.

Zim jabbed an accusing finger in Dib’s direction. “You cannot stop us, pitiful human worm!” he announced.

“No, please, keep doing that,” retorted Dib. “I really want to see you finally get banned from my house.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when he heard the tread of heavy footsteps behind him. He whirled around with the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Hey, Dad—”

Professor Membrane, his arms folded across his lab coat, shook his head sternly. He was surveying the dropped book, the broken fish, and all the other fruits of Gir’s labors that morning. “Son,” he stated, “I’m happy to see that you and your little green friend are having fun, but you need to learn how to be less destructive. Just look at this mess!”

“Huh?” Dib’s eyes widened. “I didn’t have anything to do with this! It was—” And he looked over his shoulder, only to see that in the infinitesimally small span of time before the professor had come in, Zim had yanked Gir down from the shelf and wrestled the doggie hood over his squirming robot’s head.

“Yeah, _Dib_ ,” Zim said, grinning wickedly. “You’re always _such_ a klutz.”

Dib’s hopes quickly plummeted, but he still turned back to his father, even knowing full well that it was a waste of breath. “Dad, Zim’s… _dog_ did this! His robot dog! He—”

“Oh, son,” Membrane sighed. “When are you going to start taking responsibility for your actions?” He bent down, picked up the discarded book ( _Membrane Memories: Twenty Years of Creating a Better Everything)_ and shelved it reverently. “Since this was your first sleepover, and I’m sure you just got a little carried away, I’ll let you off the hook with a warning. Now, you boys should come and get some breakfast while I get Cleanio-3000 to clean this up.”

Membrane set off for the kitchen, and Dib stared after him, feeling more dismayed than disbelieving. He could have protested, said _I never asked for this “sleepover”_ or _Zim isn’t my friend_ , but what was even the point anymore? It wouldn’t make a difference. It never did.

Zim kept beaming his insufferable smirk at Dib. “You better hurry up and get in there,” he said in a singsong voice. “We wouldn’t want your dad to think that you’re even more of a little delinquent than you already are!” Then he marched along with a gait that always made Dib grind his teeth: legs too straight, feet kicking up absurdly high. And of course, when Dib gave Zim the satisfaction of seeing how irritated he was, that was all the more incentive for Zim to keep doing it.

When Zim had vanished from sight, Dib stayed behind for a moment, rubbing his temples. Not very long ago, Zim would never set foot in this house, except in the direst of dire situations…but now it seemed like obnoxious was the new normal.

Dib’s predicament had started in the wake of the Florpus disaster. It was the closest that Zim had ever come to destroying the Earth, the closest that Dib had come to being vindicated by his father, and it had all ended with…everything being exactly the same as before. Professor Membrane was still as dismissive as ever. The population of Earth seemed to have forgotten that anything had happened. Only Zim had emerged from the ordeal slightly different – and the differences were that he was more brazen, as well as more annoying.

First, he’d started showing up at the kitchen window to heckle the Membrane family during mealtimes. Dib could have endured that…but then, after a few days, his dad had straight-up invited Zim inside for dinner. Dib had thought that Zim would refuse. He’d been silently _begging_ for Zim to refuse. But one look at the discomfort twisting up Dib’s face had been all the motivation Zim needed to accept the invitation.

So that had sucked, but at least Dib would get a consolation prize in the form of watching Zim attempt to choke down human food, which might even (though probably wouldn’t) tip off Professor Membrane. Except that the universe had denied Dib even that one small pleasure, because for some reason, Zim could actually eat their food without being sick. Membrane had offered some vague explanation about his food being “ingestible by people of all cultures”; Dib suspected that it was just because Membrane, who would occasionally lecture about the unsustainability of the meat industry, always served vegetarian meat substitutes (indistinguishable from their fleshy counterparts) instead of the real thing. In any case, Zim was delighted by the food, and even more delighted by the way Dib squirmed through the entire meal. Thus, he started showing up more frequently, more for the latter perk than the former.

Dib had been tearing out his hair ever since then. This whole thing had just been reinforcing his father’s delusion that he and Zim were friends, and Gaz was no help, either – while she wasn’t exactly on Zim’s side, she enjoyed watching her brother suffer far too much do anything. In fact, she even had a new threat for whenever he was doing something that she didn’t like: “Do what I say, or I’ll tell Dad to invite Zim over!”

Everything had come to a head last night, when Membrane had invited Zim to sleep over after dinner, seeing as how he and Dib were _such_ good friends and yes, of _course_ Zim could bring his dog over, as long as it was hypoallergenic. (Dib was allergic to everything with fur, but evil robot slaves did not generally fit into that category.) Here you _go_ boys, watch a movie, have some popcorn, play a board game, _enjoy_ yourselves!...

Needless to say, it had been the longest night of Dib’s entire life. And now here he was, the next morning, having been awakened by Gir tearing through the house and fully expected to go to the kitchen and eat breakfast with his mortal enemy. All in all, it was shaping up to be another intolerable day of summer vacation.

In the kitchen, Zim had already made himself quite comfortable, and Dib sullenly plopped down into the seat across from him. Somebody, either his dad or Foodio-3000, slid a plate of pancakes and bacon under his nose. He took listless bites while staring intently at Zim, hardly tasting the food. Zim had to be planning something big, but what…?

“What’s the matter, Dib?” taunted Zim, leaning forward slightly. “Can’t get enough of gazing upon my glorious appearance?”

Heat burst into Dib’s cheeks. “What?! _No_!” he sputtered. “Q…quit trying to play head games with me! I know exactly what you’re doing, and it’s not gonna work!”

“Eh?” Zim arched a brow. “The only head games I am interested in are the ones that I’ll be playing with your grotesquely large cranium when I sever it from your shoulders!”

Professor Membrane chuckled. “Oh, you boys and your little rivalry…”

Dib kneaded his cheeks as if that would scrub the redness away. _I’m losing my touch_ , he thought. _I can’t keep letting Zim get me flustered like this_.

“Yes, human, cleanse your face of its filthy Earth-stink,” said Zim. “Prepare your disgusting meat skin for the victorious hands of ZIIIIIIIIM!”

“Oh my god.” Dib smacked his forehead against the edge of the table, feeling the cool laminate press against his hot skin. “Will you just stop?! Do you not hear how that sounds?!”

“It sounds like my victory!” shouted Zim.

Next to him, Gaz snapped off a piece of bacon in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and said, “No. It sounds like you want to run your hands all over Dib.”

Zim’s eyes bugged out, and his skin appeared to turn a paler, more sickly shade of green. “WHAT?! I…NO! Feeble-minded human, you are simply twisting the meaning of my words! I would never dirty my superior hands by soiling them with the likes of _Dib_!”

“That’s not what you said just a second ago,” Gaz pointed out nonchalantly, biting down on another strip of bacon.

At that point, Dib shoved out his chair and stood up. “Okay, I can’t do this anymore! I’m done, I’m getting out of here! Bye, guys!”

“Son, it isn’t polite to leave your friend behind during a sleepover!” called Professor Membrane.

Dib was already at the stairs. “Zim isn’t my friend, and I don’t care!”

He dressed himself in record time, snatched a random book off of his desk, and stomped out of the house – making sure to slam the door so that both Zim and his family would know exactly how he felt about them. If he had looked back, he might have seen Zim hastily slipping out of the house right about then, dragging Gir along. But the last thing that he wanted to do right now was look back.

Back in the kitchen, Gaz looked up at her father questioningly. “What’s with them?” she asked. “I mean, they’ve always been weird, but now they’re like…different weird. Or extra weird.”

“Well, you see, daughter,” answered Membrane, steepling his fingers, “there comes a certain time in a boy’s life where he suddenly develops an interest in the opposite extreme of the gender spectrum, colloquially known as ‘girls.’ He begins to abandon his previous unscientific notions of these ‘girls’ as unsavory cootie reservoirs, and soon finds himself spending an increasing amount of energy thinking about, studying, and pursuing them in the hopes of forming a courtship. And in your brother’s life, that time…will never happen, because he’s obviously gay.”

“Ah,” said Gaz, pulling her GS4 out of her pocket.

* * *

During summer vacation, town was much too crowded during the day, particularly with children ready to mock their peers at the first provocation. So Dib took his book into the woods, planning to read beneath the cool shade of a tree.

It was a relief to be alone with his thoughts for a little while; at home, he often felt like he couldn’t even hear himself think anymore. He spread his coat out on the grass – kind of hot wearing it around in the summer, but he had to look suitably mysterious – sat down, and opened up the _Encyclopedia Phatasmica_. Maybe he needed a break from stupid aliens. Maybe focusing on ghosts would help to clear his head.

But ten minutes later, he was still staring at the first page, while various uncomfortable thoughts chewed through his head.

_Zim’s only made a few weak attempts at destroying the Earth since the Florpus thing. He’s in my house all the time, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to capture him and expose him…so why haven’t I?_

Because he wanted a fair fight? Because it wasn’t the same without the thrill of the hunt? Because something would inevitably go wrong, so there was no point in even trying?

Or because he wasn’t ready for all of this to come to an end?

One time, humiliated by his most recent defeat, Dib had decided to abandon his interest in the paranormal and study mainstream science alongside his dad. He’d lasted a few weeks. During that time, he’d missed so many of his favorite things: Mysterious Mysteries, zombies, vampire doughnuts…but the thing that had pushed him over the edge, that he’d decided he couldn’t live without, was trying to catch Zim. And when he’d finally broken down and rushed to Zim’s house, only to see Zim lazing around on the couch, had Dib caught himself that alien easily while he had a chance? Nope. He’d insisted that Zim get up and face him so that things could be exactly the way that they’d been before.

Was that why Dib was losing his mind over Zim hanging around the house all the time? Not just because he didn’t want an alien hanging around in his personal space, but because it was different from normal, and he didn’t like that? But if “normal” meant allowing a dangerous extraterrestrial to roam free and threaten the planet…

“Hunting Zim gives me more purpose than I’ve had in a long time,” he said aloud, before indignantly recoiling from the thought. “Wait, what?! How can I say that?! My priority should be the safety of the Earth! A paranormal investigator getting purpose from an alien is just…sick!”

“Talking to yourself again, eh, Dib?”

Dib jolted – then immediately let out a long sigh. He should have made better use of his alone time while he still had it.

Zim sauntered up, tugging Gir along by a leash, while Minimoose – the member of the trio who’d been absent at last night’s sleepover – bobbed along behind. “What are you plotting, human?” demanded Zim. “You wouldn’t come to the wilderness of your own free will unless you had a trick up your tricky and disgusting human sleeve!”

“I was plotting to spend five lousy minutes without you bothering me,” said Dib. “But now here you are, ruining it.”

Zim stabbed a finger forward. “You won’t get rid of me that easily! I will crush this planet beneath my heel, and _you_ , Dib, will be forced to watch the subjugation of humanity before I subject you to excruciating torture and death!”

“Okay,” said Dib. “Could you please leave me alone until you actually get to the whole crushing-the-planet-and-subjugating-humanity part?

Zim froze in the middle of triumphantly shaking his fist. “Eh?”

“You haven’t really done anything in a while. You just hang around my house and annoy me.”

“No I don’t!”

Gir chimed in: “Yes you do!”

“Nya!” agreed Minimoose.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Zim snapped, before clearing his throat. “It’s really none of your business, stink-boy, but if you must know…I’m conserving my greatest ideas for when the Almighty Tallest return.”

Dib blinked. “Return from where?”

“Eh…I don’t know,” admitted Zim. “They just haven’t been answering my calls.”

Dib thought back to the Florpus incident. Zim’s leaders, who apparently only flew in a straight line, had been piloting their armada straight towards the displaced Earth. Then Earth had been teleported back to its rightful place at the last possible moment, which would have left the armada directed towards…

“Um, are you sure that your leaders aren’t dead from, like, being torn apart in that Florpus hole you created?” asked Dib.

“No, no, that can’t be right!” Zim flapped his hand dismissively at Dib. “And even if it is, Irk would have chosen a new Tallest by now. No Tallest would ever ignore Zim, their greatest and most incredible Invader!”

Dib shrugged. He had to admit, it would have been weird for the Almighty Tallest to fly straight into the Florpus when they probably had ample time and equipment to avoid it. Either way, the end result was still the same: he and Zim were left with nothing to do but get on each other’s nerves.

Zim began half-marching, half-pacing back and forth. “In the meantime, although I’m saving my brilliant plans for when I can show them to the Tallest, my important infiltration work continues. Now I have your father-human eating out of the palm of my hand! He will _never_ believe you!” He belted out a maniacal laugh that, which was too loud and lasted several seconds too long.

“You’re right,” said Dib.

“OF COURSE I’M – wait.” Zim stopped in his tracks. “You’re actually agreeing with Zim?!”

“Yes, for once.” Dib glanced down at the book that still lay open in his lap, as if taunting his inability to focus on it, and slammed the cover shut. “I know my Dad will never believe me. Even when he has proof right in front of his face, he either says it’s fake or just thinks that it’s all a dream. If the Florpus stuff didn’t convince him, then nothing will. It’s a lost cause.”

“Oh.” At first, Zim didn’t see to know what to make of that, but then: “Yeah, it sucks when your authority figures just ignore you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” agreed Dib.

The two of them looked at each other, and a strange, awkward sense of solidarity passed between them. It was broken after a couple of seconds, when Zim pointed mockingly at Dib and uttered, “HA!”

And then, as if the Earth itself had been shaken by that weird moment of them relating to each other, the ground began to rumble.

Dib sprang to his feet, but he was forced to grab the nearest tree trunk in order to stay upright. Zim, on the other hand, fell straight onto his butt. Gir and Minimoose started jumping around and squeaking, apparently having decided that this was a cause for celebration even as the very air thrummed around them.

Clouds of dust began gushing into the air, and Dib squinted, trying to see what was going on – only to be rewarded with a blinding flash of light that rivaled the sun in brightness. He winced sharply, pressing back against the tree. The ground rattled and heaved, shaking faster and faster, until…

 _BOMP!_

With one last concussion, everything settled down as quickly as it had gotten riled up. No more shaking, no more bright light, and even the dust was sinking back down; nevertheless, something was still different – and that something was the addition of a dome-like orange structure, curving above the treetops less than a hundred yards away.

“Eh?!” shrieked Zim.

“No way,” breathed Dib.

For the first time in too long, his passion for the paranormal ignited within him, fueling the engines of his mind that had grown creaky from disuse. Now _this_ was a change that he could deal with – because right now, right in front of him, was what could only be an alien spaceship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just dropping in to say thank you for the hugely positive response you guys gave me on the last chapter! I really hope that I can do right by you with the rest of this story. Also s/o to my fiancee for her suggestions because she seems to have a better grasp on the show's humor than I do.
> 
> Next update: Meet the Kri Society!


	3. Enter the Kri

Dib snatched his coat from off of the ground behind him, wriggling into it as he ran towards the ship. If he was going to be facing other aliens again, then he needed to look like a proper paranormal investigator while doing it.

After passing a few pummeled trees, the ship loomed up before him, glinting rust-orange in the sun. He hadn’t seen enough ships to get a proper idea of this one’s comparative size; it was bigger than Zim’s voot, smaller than the Irken Massive, perhaps comparable in size to a large Earth house. That was about as accurate as he could get.

“I think that’s an Irken ship,” said Zim, footsteps crunching as he came to stand beside Dib. He brought out some kind of optical port from his PAK and squinted into it. “Computer?”

Dib just barely heard the computer’s muffled response: “Ship is an IK-219 model Colonizer, size small.”

Zim frowned. “That model of Colonizer was discontinued ages ago! And besides, the logo’s wrong!”

Dib looked up. Sure enough, etched in silver on the ship’s hull was a symbol, but not the Irken Armada insignia that he had come to know and loathe. At first glance, it just looked like a heart, but then he spotted a tiny pointed shape at the bottom and realized that it was a stylized Irken head with large, curving antennae. It was made up of sweeping curves – no harsh corners, no leering mouth. Acting instinctively, he whipped out the notepad and pen that he always kept with him, jotting down a quick sketch of the logo.

“Oh, great. What did you morons do?” demanded a familiar voice behind him.

Zim nearly jumped out of his skin, and Dib jerked around to find Gaz standing there nonchalantly, arms crossed, GS4 dangling from one hand. He frowned. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Neither did Zim!” exclaimed Mr. Refers-To-Himself-In-The-Third-Person.

Gaz half-opened one eye. “Really? Something weird happened, and you two aren’t the reason why?”

Gir peeked out from behind Zim and whispered, “I know…I’m scared, too.”

The front hatch of the ship dropped open with a clang.

Dib hopped back, startled – then immediately leaned forward to try and see what he could make out of the ship’s interior. It mostly looked like vague darkness…at least until a sharp humanoid shape, vibrantly colored, strode out to stand against the opening.

A female Irken glared down at them with deep purple eyes, as if she were looking at a film of pond scum staining her shoes. Dib’s heartbeat spiked. She had swapped out her purple uniform for an orange version of the same outfit, and a silver logo matching the one on the ship’s hull gleamed on her chest, but there was no doubt in his mind as to who he was currently looking at.

“Tak?!” he cried.

“YOU!” Zim shouted, clenching his fists. “You’ve finally come to seek your revenge on Zim, haven’t you?!”

Tak cleared her throat. “I—”

“HAVEN’T YOU?!”

“I really wish that were true,” she snapped, baring her teeth. “Zim! The leader of the Kri Society has requested your presence for a meeting, so come up here and let’s get this over with!”

“HAVEN’T YOU?!?!”

“Wait, the what society?” echoed Dib.

Her eyes barely flicked over to him. “This doesn’t concern you, human.”

“HAH!” Zim puffed out his chest and smirked. “So you were too scared to come and face me alone, eh, Tak?! You had to join up with some…DOOKIE society, just to—”

She tossed up her hands. “You know what, I don’t have to deal with this. He’s all yours, sir!”

With that, she stepped to the side, not quite out of sight. A clunking sound rang out from within the ship – _metal boots against a metal floor_ , Dib thought – and somebody else stepped out and stood before them.

Tak had said “sir,” but he was almost certain that the newcomer was a female Irken; she had coil-tipped antennae, plus long, prominent eyelashes. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing he noticed was how tall she was, definitely comparable to an adult human in height. Based on what he knew about Irkens and their height-based hierarchy, this meant that she was probably someone important ( _a new Tallest, possibly?_ ). He was also struck by how…non-evil she looked. Her face, creased here and there with age, had a gentle expression that he wasn’t used to seeing on Irkens, and her oblong green eyes held no nastiness or scheming. Her outfit ( _orange again; what’s with all the orange?_ ) was a more elaborate version of Tak’s.

“This is a horrible idea, you know,” Tak complained to the tall lady. “He’s already insufferable.”

“Tak, please, I don’t need you to make this more difficult than it already is,” the lady replied. She walked down the ramp and towards the gawkers on the ground. “…Zim?”

Dib managed to tear his eyes away from her long enough to peer over his shoulder. Gaz, standing directly behind him, looked as apathetic as ever, but Zim…

With his arms at his sides and his antennae flattened against his head, Zim’s posture was more subdued than Dib had ever seen it. Not only that, but the way that his eyes were ever-so-slightly narrowed…it was as if he thought that he had seen this lady once, years ago, perhaps as a glimpsed face in the back of a crowd, and was now trying to work out just when and where it had been.

She smiled sadly. “You don’t remember me, do you, Zim?”

Shockingly, he said nothing, only squinted a little harder.

“I’m not surprised.” She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “You were so young the last time I…well, I sort of expected that you wouldn’t remember your old Mameen.”

That last word had a visible effect on Zim; his brow furrowed, and his antennae flipped up slightly. “What? No,” he said, in a bizarrely calm tone of voice. “You…you aren’t _her._ ”

Her eyes widened. “You remember?!”

“I remember Mameen,” he responded, somewhere between puzzled and defensive. “But you can’t be her. I mean, she’s sort of…dead.”

“No. That’s only what they told you.”

“It’s what I know!” Zim frowned deeply. “Some dissenter shot you – _her_ down. I watched the trial on TV from the Smeetery. There was this little grub guy, he was so pathetic-looking, and Tallest Miyuki had him executed for the murder of her successor, and the creche-carers told us about how that’s what will happen if we go against the mighty Irken Empire! And they dropped him into a pit full of starving, rabid prisoners of war, from—”

“The planet Blorch,” finished the lady. “I know. He was devoured alive by slaughtering rat people. I’m not even sure who that guy was…probably someone that the Empire wanted to get rid of anyway…but he wasn’t responsible for shooting me down. He was just a decoy.”

“I thought he was a Meekrobian.”

She sighed. “He was a _plant_ , Zim. I mean, not the kind of plant that grows from the ground – the Control Brains were just using him to prevent Tallest Miyuki, and everyone else, from looking into the matter too closely.”

He pushed out his lower lip and crossed his arms. “Lies! Lies and dookie!”

The lady was silent for a moment, pensive and resigned. Then: “The last time I saw you, I told you to keep asking questions. It’s sad to see that you’ve lost that inclination.”

His antennae snapped back against his head, as if she’d just struck him.

Dib decided to use this break in the conversation to speak up. “Um, excuse me, but can somebody please tell me what’s going on?!” He pivoted on his heels, turning to take in everyone’s reactions, but apparently he was the only one who’d decided that this stuff was worth any attention. Gaz was fiddling with her GS4. Gir and Minimoose appeared to be playing pat-a-cake. Even Tak, standing in the ship’s opening above them, looked bored.

The tall lady faced Dib, blinking. “Oh? I’m sorry, where are my manners?” She leaned over him and extended her hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mala, former Elite Commander of the Irken Empire.”

He regarded her offered hand suspiciously, then gave it a single, perfunctory shake. “I thought your name was Mameen?”

“No, no!” She chuckled. “ _Mameen_ isn’t a name. It’s an Irken familiar term for ‘mother’ – something like Mama or Mommy, if I’ve got your language right.”

Dib recoiled. “ _Mother_?! You mean…Irkens have parents?! _Zim_ has parents?!”

“Of course not!” Zim interjected; it seemed that no matter how he was feeling, he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to contradict Dib. “Even if this…this so-called Elite is who she says she is, she is not Zim’s mother!”

“No,” she agreed, “but that’s always what you called me, right from the start. Do you remember that? The very first time I went into the Smeetery, how you came up to me and asked, ‘Are you my Mameen?’ That feels like such a long time ago…oh, what was I saying before?” She shook her head. “Anyway, yes, my name is Mala. As for you, young man, would I be correct in the assumption that you are Dib?”

With a jolt, Dib stumbled a few steps back from her. “Why do you know that?!”

“Oh, I’ve been keeping tabs on the situation here for a while,” Mala explained. “I had to make sure that Zim was really on this planet, so I got in touch with…my Earth contact. Anyway, you and Zim spend an awful lot of time together, so I know a bit about you…”

While he was trying to think of an intelligent response to that, Zim’s mental state seemed to snap from befuddlement into anger. He marched up to Mala, jamming a finger into her chest – which was a long reach for him, but with some stretching, he managed to get there. “Hey, listen up, you…you supposed mother-lady!” he yelled. “You have some explaining to do! First you land on _my_ planet, interrupting my glorious mission with your claims of being my Mameen! Then you say that Irk was faking your death, and now you admit to spying on me?! My Mameen wouldn’t have just watched me from afar like that! She would have come back to me, her favorite and most incredible smeet, as soon as she could! You are dripping with disgusting, slimy lies! If you’re really Mameen, then why didn’t you try to call me before now, eh?! Eh, eh?!”

Mala stared down at him. “You don’t need to speak to me like that, young man.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Zim shrank down under her gaze, cowed and obedient out of nowhere. Dib thought: _No matter what he says, he definitely believes that she is who she says she is. He never just bows over to anybody like that. But all this alien woman had to do was open her mouth, and he shut up like…well, like a kid being scolded._

Zim suddenly scowled at him. “What are you saying, human Dib?!”

“Huh?” Dib realized that he had been thinking out loud, muttering his conclusions to himself, and he flushed pink. “N-nothing! I wasn’t saying anything!”

“The short answer to your questions, Zim, is that I was waiting to come and find you until I had made someplace safe for you,” said Mala. “And now I finally have that place: the Kri Society.”

Zim looked quizzical. “Eh? ‘Kri’?”

“Kri,” she repeated. “As in, the opposite of Irk. And we want you to help us save the universe.”

He stared at her. “Irkens don’t _save_ the universe. We _conquer_ it.”

“Yes, well, that’s sort of the entire problem.” Mala waved her arm towards the ship behind her, where Tak was still lingering in the hatch, monitoring a readout on some kind of floating screen and looking singularly unimpressed. “If you’ll come inside for just a few minutes, I can explain everything.”

“I’m not falling for that one!” he declared. “You’ll just take off the second I set foot in there, whether I want to come with you or not!”

She held up her right hand. “No tricks, Zim. I swear it on Tallest Miyuki’s grave.”

“…hmm…hmmmm…” One finger tapped rapidly against his chin. “…ugh, I guess so! But only because I find your fakery amusing! And a few minutes is all you’ll be getting from _ZIIIIIIM!”_

Mala smiled, and for a fleeting moment, Dib wondered if that was how all moms smiled when they’d finally gotten past the token protests of their offspring. Having never had a mother, he honestly didn’t know. “I appreciate that. Shall we get this over and done with, then?”

With that, she headed back into the ship, her boots clunking against the ramp. Zim hesitated, then called, “Gir! Minimoose!” and trotted after her. Her legs were so much longer than his that he practically had to run in order to catch up with her.

It didn’t take long for Dib to decide to follow them. He still had no real idea of what was going on; the conversation he’d just heard had left him with more questions than answers, and for any half-decent paranormal investigator, finding out more was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, hie hadn’t gone five steps before his path was blocked by Tak.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“Oh! I, uh, I’m…” His tongue flailed in his mouth. Honestly, he’d nearly forgotten that she was still standing in the hatch.

“I don’t believe that Elite Mala invited you inside,” she said coolly. “And we have no business with humans.” She shoved him back, hard enough that he struggled to keep his footing, and darted inside the ship to close it up.

Only when the hatch had mostly retracted did Gaz finally lower her GS4 slightly. “Are we done? Good, let’s get out of here. It’s hot and the bugs are eating me alive and…”

She looked up just in time to see Dib take a running leap at one of the trees overhanging the Kri ship, grab a high branch by the tips of his fingers, and swing forward to catapult himself onto the roof. He peered down at the nearly-closed hatch, evidently decided that the gap was too narrow for him to fit through without being squished, and promptly ran up and across the dome-like metal structure to try and find another way in.

Gaz clenched her fists so hard that the game console’s plastic casing trembled and groaned in her hands. “ _Idiot!_ ”

* * *

Everything resembling a door on the ship’s roof was sealed tight, not responding to even the strongest of kicks, but that was only a minor inconvenience for Dib. Settling down cross-legged on the curved surface below him, which was pitted and streaked with the remnants of many rough voyages, he reached into the largest interior pocket of his coat and produced his laptop. Brute force had never been his style – why break when you could sneak?

The ship was an IK-219 Colonizer; he remembered Zim’s computer saying so. He quickly accessed his database of Irken interstellar vehicles (courtesy of Tak’s old ship, fortuitously downloaded before said vessel was destroyed during the Florpus incident) and located the relevant entry. Within a minute, he’d reached the outer boundaries of the Kri’s computer system. Now he just had to wriggle past the firewall…which, he noticed, had been modified slightly, patched with imperfect-but-clever traps that might have tripped up a lesser hacker…but he soon made short work of that, too.

A window popped up on his screen: OPEN TOP DECK MAINTENANCE PANEL Y/N?

“Yes,” he said aloud.

Nothing happened. He was craning his neck, trying to see where the panel had opened, when a small trapdoor retracted directly beneath him and dumped him inside.

Dib landed on a narrow, rickety catwalk, which swayed like an ocean liner for several long seconds after his painful descent, leaving him to wait for several long seconds until he judged that it was safe to stand. The catwalk ran the circumference of the round room beneath him – the bridge, according to his database – and since a multitude of cables snaked across the ceiling above him, it was presumably used for repairing those, as well as for getting out to the roof if the need arose. He warily checked around for a ladder or staircase, not wanting to move any more than he had to on such a precarious perch, but then the sound of voices drifted up from below, and he realized that he didn’t have to go anywhere: this was already the perfect place to eavesdrop.

“Well, that’s convenient,” he said to himself, before very cautiously laying flat on his stomach and staring straight down at the scene unfolding beneath him.

At first glance, the bridge looked like it was full of standard Irken equipment, but a closer inspection revealed that everything was worn out and oft-repaired. Just about every piece of technology showed signs of having been patched up at some point, and a few items looked like they were held together with nothing but electrical tape and positive thinking. And, of course, there were the Irkens themselves; Mala, Tak, Zim, Zim’s evil minions, and four other figures dressed in identical orange uniforms, all of them clustered near a central console.

“Here we are!” Mala’s voice rang out cheerfully.

Zim was clearly not very impressed with the ship; Dib couldn’t get an accurate read of his facial expression from this height, but his tone of voice was unmistakable. “Ugh, look at this dump! Did you dig it out of the trash or something?!”

“Er, sort of,” admitted Mala. “We salvaged it from the planet Garbagia. Anyway, Zim, meet the troops! There’s Tak, of course, my First Officer; this is our Chief Navigator, Tee—”

“If he touches my console, I’m going to break his fingers,” said a female voice, apparently belonging to an average-sized Irken near one of the computer screens.

Mala cleared her throat. “Our Head Technician, Blis—”

“Hi.” This response came from a stout female Irken who lurked at the back of the group. “Please never talk to me again.”

“…our Battle Strategist, Tenn, I’m not sure if you’ve met her, but she was also an Invader—”

“We were creche-mates, actually.” Yet another girl’s voice. The speaker this time looked remarkably like Zim, at least from a distance.

“Ah, of course, I should have remembered. And you definitely know Skoodge!”

“Hey, Zim!” Okay, so there _was_ another boy here after all. A chubby but enthusiastic boy, shorter than all of the girls, who apparently was the only one actually excited to see Zim. “Welcome aboard! Wow, with you, me, and Mameen here, it’s just like old times, huh?”

Zim sighed dramatically. “Oh, Skoodge, you’re as gullible as ever. I supposed that you believed this faker as soon as she said that she was Mameen!”

“Um…she _is_ Mameen.” Skoodge was clearly confused. “Hasn’t she told you about what happened to her?”

“I was about to,” interjected Mala. She drew herself up straight, sweeping her gaze across he assembled crew members before settling on Zim. “You want to know why the Kri Society is trying to save the universe?”

He nodded.

“It’s because, after years of tearing this universe apart and putting it back together in whatever way they choose, the Irken Empire has become more extreme than ever. They’ve appointed a new Tallest, who is planning to—”

“It smells like dirt pudding in here!” exclaimed Gir out of nowhere, yanking the green doggie hood off of his head.

One of the girls, Tenn, let out a bloodcurdling screech and flung herself under the nearest chair. “AIIIIEEEEE! GET THAT _THING_ OUT OF HERE!”

“Oh, are we screamin’ now?” asked Gir brightly. “I wanna scream too! AAAAAAAAAHHHH—”

Mala leapt into action, snatching Gir into her arms and clamping one hand over his face; he kicked his legs happily, probably assuming that this was all a part of some game going on in his head. When his shrieks had been sufficiently muffled, she asked with obvious concern, “Tenn? Are you all right?”

“…I-I…” Tenn slunk out from under the chair and stood up, her hands clamped across her own shoulders. “I…yes. Yes, I’m fine. S-sorry.”

Mala hesitated, as if debating whether or not to go and assess her shaken-up crew member, then shoved Gir back at Zim. “Young man, please control your SIR unit. Tenn is…sensitive…about them.”

“You hear that, Minimoose?” said Zim. “Keep an eye on your robot brother! And Gir, don’t bother us while we’re talking!”

“Yes, my Master!”

Mala dropped down into a large, cushioned seat that must have been the captain’s chair, massaging her temples. Doubtlessly, she was starting to get an idea of what everyday life with Zim was like now. “Where was I…? Oh, yes, the new Tallest. He has decided that the Irken Empire should no longer just be content to rule the _existing_ universe. So he’s cooked up a plan whereby the Irken Armada, headed by his newly commissioned flagship, the Hypermassive, will completely destroy this universe and replace it with a new, worse one, in which Irkens will be not only rulers, but gods!”

Dib nearly stopped breathing. He’d dealt with Irkens attempting to destroy the Earth several times before…but now they were going after the entire universe?!

“What?!” exclaimed Zim. “That’s…that’s BRILLIANT! Almost as brilliant as something I would have come up with!”

Mala smacked herself in the forehead. “No, Zim, that’s _bad_!”

“Eh?! Irkens finally ascending to their rightful place as ultimate overlords of the universe is bad?! My Mameen, loyal soldier of the Empire and successor to the Tallest, would never think so! I knew you were a phony!”

“Zim, even if I were still an Elite Commander, I wouldn’t approve of this plan!” she snapped. “Trying to replace the entire universe is idiotic hubris! It’s physically and mathematically impossible for any currently known beings to survive something like that!”

“How do YOU know?” he challenged, crossing his arms. “Have you ever tried?”

“No, and I don’t intend to! And even if we _could_ survive it, life wouldn’t be worth living, not with the Empire in control!”

“You speak of blasphemy, fake-mother! Why would my Mameen ever spout such _hideous_ comments?!”

At this point, Mala had grown so agitated that she could no longer contain herself, and she sprang out of her chair like a bullet ricocheting out of a gun. “Because what I am _trying_ to tell you is that the Irken Empire is responsible for shooting me down!”

Zim stiffened. In the blink of an eye, he was back to that odd, perplexed-but-eerily-calm state that he had exhibited outside, and up on the catwalk, Dib finally recognized this behavior as a way to avoid dealing with emotional contradictions. He’d never really considered the emotions of Irkens before – they primarily just seemed to be evil aliens whose only feelings were rage, bloodlust, and triumph over enemies – but now it occurred to him that the truth might be a bit more complex than that. After all, Mala was appealing to Zim by invoking a parent-to-child bond, even if she wasn’t his biological mother. That implied that Irkens felt some form of attachment…maybe even love?

Now _that_ was an uncomfortable thought. He returned his attention to the exchange happening below him.

Zim said plaintively, “That’s not true. Everybody respected you, and you were Tallest Miyuki’s favorite! She would never have ordered you shot down!”

“You’re right, Zim. She had nothing to do with it. You remember when I left you and Skoodge for the last time, how I was supposed to fly to Devastus and train a new class of Invaders? That was all a setup. The Control Brains went behind Miyuki’s back to take me out of the picture so that I would never rise to power.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t meet their standards.” Mala began to pace the floor. “I’m not like normal Irkens. I’m too…empathetic. It was never enough to get me marked as defective, because I was tall, I was strong, I always got the job done, I never moved so much as a toe out of line – but normal Irkens don’t do things like, say, get attached to a couple of random smeets. So the Control Brains watched me, decided that I was a threat, and finally took me out of action.”

He almost appeared to be considering this, but it was like his mouth couldn’t stop running even while his brain was still processing what he’d heard. “You’re delusional. The Control Brains serve the Tallest! Everyone knows that!”

“Yes, that’s exactly what they want you to think.” With a sigh, she flopped back into her captain’s chair. “My voot was shot down over Irk before I had even left the atmosphere. While the false trial to sate Miyuki was happening on the surface, I was held captive underground for years, being probed and examined. What was causing me to care so much about my fellow Irkens? What flaw had surfaced in such a high-ranking Irken as myself? If the Control Brains could find that out, then they could prevent it from ever happening again. But as long as they kept me alive, I could hope that I would escape someday, hating them more and more all the time. By the time I got my chance to break free, everything had changed. Miyuki was gone, few people remembered who I was, and you and Skoodge were off-planet. Staying on Irk would have meant recapture and death. So I set off and began work on…this.” She waved her hand at the ship, her crew, and the Kri Society generally. “For you.”

Zim’s antennae lowered, then raised again. “For _me_?”

“For you and Skoodge and every other Irken who has worked hard and remained loyal, only to have Irk turn its back on them. That’s who these ladies are – I met them during my travels, and recruited each of them once I learned what Irk had done to them. And now, finally, I’ve come to you. Because I’m your Mameen. Because I always wanted better for you. I’m offering you everything that I could never give you when you were my smeet. Will you accept it?”

There was silence throughout the bridge. Dib found himself waiting on bated breath to see how Zim would respond.

Then, finally: “…you do realize that I am Irk’s finest Invader, right? If I went up to this new Tallest and offered to join forces with him, he would accept me without a moment’s hesitation…”

For some reason, this statement provoked a lot of heated muttering among the girls, but Mala turned around and hushed them. “Let him finish.”

“If I said I wanted to do that, what would you do to stop me?” demanded Zim.

“Nothing,” said Mala. “It’s your choice.”

He mimicked her actions earlier and began to pace, treading a circle on the floor. After three or four rotations, he stopped abruptly and said, “Your falsehoods _do_ intrigue Zim. And I need to make contact with this new Tallest before my infiltration of Earth can continue, and since he apparently doesn’t know how to answer his communicator…”

He looked behind him at his robots; Gir was keeping himself entertained by playing with Minimoose’s nubs. “What do you think?” asked Zim. “Should we travel with these inferior rebels for a while?”

Gir tilted his head. “I like Mameen! She’s nice!”

“Hey, she’s _my_ Mameen, not yours! …eh, I mean…all right, then. We have decided to accompany you for the time being. But don’t expect me to just turn my back on Irk and swear allegiance to your Kri Society! Zim serves no one but ZIIIIM!”

“I can live with that,” said Mala, who stood up once more, placing her hand on Zim’s shoulder. “Welcome aboard, my smeet.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes — but, Dib couldn’t help noticing, made no attempt to dislodge her hand. “You’re lucky that I don’t hop into my voot right now and report you all to the Irken authorities! Fortunately, these ideas of yours are fairly entertaining.”

“I can share a lot more of them now that you’re coming along,” she promised. “All right, ladies and Skoodge, let’s set a course for our next destination!”

There was assorted groaning from all of the girls, none of whom looked very happy that Zim would be accompanying them. Only the other boy, Skoodge, seemed glad of the newcomer’s presence.

Up on the catwalk, Dib’s heart and mind were both racing. The conversation had revealed so many developments: non-evil Irkens! A resistance movement aiming to stop the Irken Armada! After standing against Zim alone for so long, he finally felt as if he had found a group of kindred spirits that might even listen to him and support his ideas. He could have a chance to not only save the world, but also the entire universe…

What was the Kri Society’s plan? Could Zim really be convinced to turn to the side of goodness if his adoptive mother figure was involved? Dib _had_ to know.

There was a sudden jolt, and the catwalk began to rattle softly beneath him — that must have been the ship’s engine coming on. The Kri weren’t wasting any time. Well, who would, when the fate of the universe was at stake? There was a time for sitting around and waiting, and there was a time for—

A hand reached out and snatched him by the back of the coat.

Dib gasped as he was wrenched back sharply, and before he had a chance to react, his head was being twisted around painfully to face — “Gaz?!” he cried. “What the — how did you get in here?!”

“You left the panel wide open behind you,” she snarled. “Dib, get your brainless butt out of here right now. The last thing you need is more fodder for your crazy alien obsession.”

With a sharp tug, he managed to free himself from her rasp, taking a single step back. “No.”

Her eyes burned wide in the dim light. “ _What_ did you just say to me?!”

“Gaz, it’s different this time!” he exclaimed. “These aliens are on _our_ side! See, there’s this new evil Tallest who wants to destroy the universe, but they’re going to—”

“I don’t care! You are coming with me if I have to pull off both your arms and drag you home by the bloody bone stumps!”

“I’m _not_ just going to sit around at home knowing that we’re all in trouble, and that Zim may or may not cause even _more_ trouble on top of that!”

Gaz’s eye twitched. “Dib, listen to me. I don’t _care_ what you do. If you want to run around and get yourself killed in outer space, that’s not on me. But _Dad_ will care if you die, and if he’s upset, then I’m upset, so let’s get _out_ of here!”

Really? She was trying to guilt him with the Dad card? “Dad won’t care.”

“Yes he will!”

“No he won’t! He never does!”

“Back during the Florpus thing—”

“Yeah, okay, he saved us there, but what was the point?! It’s not like he believes me about what happened then! It’s not like he cares about _anything_ that I have to say!”

Her hands tightened into fists, and she seized the front of his shirt. “Oh, that is _it!_ We’re leaving _right now_ , and as soon as we get off this ship, I’m going to make you wish that you were never—”

_THUNK!_

Both brother and sister threw their eyes toward the ceiling. The maintenance hatch that had been open overhead, beaming down a dusty stream of light, had just snapped shut.

“Uh-oh,” said Dib.

Gaz opened her mouth, no doubt ready to spew a stream of outraged insults in his direction before beating him flat into the ground, but she didn’t get the chance to utter even a single scathing comment. The ship’s engine revved into a roar and then a scream, and then the two of them were shoved unceremoniously to the floor by the force of gravity as the Kri ship launched into the Earth’s atmosphere.


	4. Starship Stowaway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD THIS IS A LATE UPDATE. Has it really been three weeks since I last posted?? Look, I swear I have been working on this the whole time, but, y’know, I work full-time, the holidays snuck up on me...and also this chapter is really, really long. At least by my standards, it is. I was originally planning to end it further along, but it was SO LONG I just said screw it, I’ll make the original ending part of the next chapter.
> 
> Speaking of next chapter, we’ll get to some actual action in that one. I swear.

Dib’s back slammed hard against the rear wall of the ship, and he hung there with his feet dangling above the ground, like on one of those carnival rides that glued you to a wall with centrifugal force. But the Kri ship, dingy as it may have looked, was much more powerful than any carnival ride; he felt as if his entire body was flattening, turning into goo as he stayed plastered in place, until all the blood and guts would ooze out of him as of a bug on a windshield. G-forces drilled into his brain like needles; his vision sparkled with static, then went black; worst of all were the shaking, intense vibrations that seemed like they’d rattle the ship to pieces and him along with it. Just as he was sure that his consciousness was about to fade the way that his vision had, everything came to an abrupt stop, and he found himself unpeeling from the wall and ending up with a face full of floor. Or a face full of catwalk, rather.

Mala’s voice bounced up from below: “That was rough. Is everyone okay?”

Assorted groans responded to her question.

Somebody on the ground, possibly Tak, said, “We really have no business trying to hyperjump twice in such a short period of time.”

“She’s right,” said somebody else, another girl — Dib didn’t know their voices well enough to tell who it was without looking. “The ship can’t take it.”

“I guess it was a little reckless,” admitted Mala. “But we have a lot of ground to cover, and I thought it would be best to get a head start…”

Dib’s blood had stopped rushing fast enough to make him dizzy, and he had just started pushing himself up when he felt a foot crush him back down, followed by a kick in the ribs and another too close to his nose for comfort.

“OW!” He covered his face with both hands. “Gaz, stop!”

“You drooling moron!” shouted his seething sister. She yanked him up by the collar, and his head snapped up to see her face twisted, her eyes bulging with fury. “I can’t _believe_ you just dragged me into space with you! I’m gonna beat you up so bad that you’re barely alive, just so that Dad can do the honors and finish you off when we get home!”

He cringed, less from her threats and more from the sheer volume of her outburst. “Keep it down!” he hissed. “We’re going to be discovered!”

“You’re already discovered,” said a toneless voice at one end of the catwalk.

Gaz dropped her brother to his feet, sparing him from further beatings as both siblings turned to see who had found them out already. An Irken wearing an orange Kri uniform stood on some kind of hovering platform that had risen to the edge of the catwalk. Dib recognized her from Mala’s introductions before — she was the stout girl, Blis. Up close, he noticed a few details that he hadn’t been able to spot when she was down below: she had deep blue eyes, and her antennae were the shortest he’d seen yet on an Irken, tiny and curled tight against her head. She also didn’t look very impressed to see them standing there.

“Humans,” she muttered. “Wonderful. That’s exactly what this ship needed, Zim plus two humans, to make everything even more noisy and unbearable.”

Gaz shoved Dib so hard that he nearly fell off the catwalk.

As he stumbled near the edge, struggling to regain his balance, Blis produced a device that was the size and shape of a pen and pointed it at him. Suddenly he was enveloped in some kind of force field bubble, hovering in front of her. She flicked the device again, and now Gaz was bubbled, too.

Well, if he was already caught, he’d might as well go for broke. “Look,” started Dib, leaning forward and hoping that he could be heard from within the confines of the bubble, “I think that I can be useful to you and your society! My name is—”

“Dib Membrane, yes, and you think you’re the protector of Earth, blah blah blah,” Blis finished for him. “Spare me the hype. Everyone here knows who you are, and _who you are_ is only going to make things worse for you. Elite Mala is _not_ going to be happy about this, and when she gets unhappy, she gets _loud_. So I’m just going to drop you off with her and then leave as quickly as possible.”

With that, she shifted her foot against some kind of hidden control, and her hovering platform sank down to the level of the bridge. Dib and Gaz were dragged along with her like balloons bobbing on strings.

Mala’s voice, much closer now: “Blis? Where did you run off to, dear?”

“Heard something in the gantry,” Blis replied as she stepped off of her platform. “Here you go, sir.” She flicked her pen-device one last time, sending Dib and Gaz sprawling to their knees directly in front of Mala.

The Kri leader reared up in shock above them, her eyes wide with dismay. “The Membrane children?!”

Zim peered out from behind Mala, his eyes blasting wide. “WHAT?!”

“Ooh, Mary is here!” chirped Gir from somewhere currently outside of Dib’s line of sight.

Dib pulled himself to his feet – for a split second, he wondered if it was considered more respectful to kneel in front of Mala, but then again, nobody else had done so. “Ummm…yeah, it’s us,” he said lamely. “We…uh…”

A hard sock in the arm disrupted his train of thought. “Don’t start including me in this!” snapped Gaz, brandishing her fists at him. “I don’t want to be here! This is all _his_ fault!”

Mala shook her head and muttered, “Why am I not surprised to hear that?”

Dib’s heart sank a little at her immediate dismissal of him; for a second, she almost put him in mind of his father, with the way that she was looking down on him with such consternation. He straightened up immediately and said, “Okay, yes, I stowed away, but Mala – umm, Elite Mala, I mean – I’m here to help you! This is the first time I’ve met somebody else who wants to stop the evil Irken Empire! I know all kinds of things about Irk, I’ve been fighting against Zim for years, and—!”

She tugged on her antennae, seeming agitated. “Dib, I appreciate your fighting spirit, but you really have no idea what you’re up against. I’ve heard about your clashes with Zim, but Zim is not an accurate representation of the actual Irken empire!”

“Hey!” cried Zim. “You’re right. I’m WAY better!”

“I can do this!” protested Dib. “I know that I’ll be able to help if you let me! Okay, maybe there’s some things I don’t know, but if you just show me, I can—”

Mala sighed. “Enough, young man. It’s bad enough that you stowed away, but I’m certainly not going to be putting a child into the line of fire! Especially not when…” She gave her head an abrupt shake, as if to make troubling thoughts fly out of her ears like water (well…if she had ears) and announced, “I need to go speak with my Earth contact!”

With that, she stormed out of the bridge…or really, not so much stormed out as crossed over to another door in a particularly brisk and efficient manner. Said door slid open to allow her into what was probably her private quarters, then slammed shut forbiddingly, barring anyone else from disturbing her.

After a moment, Dib hesitantly asked no one in particular, “Who is her Earth contact?” She’d briefly mentioned this person before, saying that they were the reason why she knew who Dib was, but he wasn’t even entirely sure what the phrase “Earth contact” meant in this context.

The Kri crewmember closest to him – it happened to be Tenn, and her resemblance to Zim was not any less striking up close – shrugged, barely glancing in his direction. “We don’t know.”

“You don’t?” He looked around, his gaze landing on Tak, who seemed to be Mala’s second-in-command. “What about you, Tak?”

Tak was sitting at a console near the bridge’s front-and-center screen, and she didn’t address him directly; clearly such a thing was beneath her dignity. Still, she did at least answer him. “Nobody except Elite Mala knows who the Earth contact is. She says that they value their anonymity. All we know is that they are an Irken disguised as a human who lives on Earth.”

“Oh,” said Dib, none too happy to hear this. “Great. Another Irken is on Earth, and I don’t even know who they are.”

“Most of us know how to disguise ourselves better than Zim,” said Tak.

“Hey!” cried Zim again.

Dib recalled when Tak had come to Earth, how her disguise had been accurate enough that he’d never suspected her of being an alien. If other Irkens were more like that than like Zim…the thought bothered him. As a paranormal investigator, he should be able to spot extraterrestrial creatures without fail, and yet there might be one right under his nose that he never would have known about. Still, he reassured himself, he had a lot to learn about the Irken race, and maybe if he could learn a thing or two on this trip, it would help him sniff out “the Earth contact” once he got back home.

Meanwhile, Gaz had settled into the captain’s chair, fiddling with her GS4. “Uh, I think that’s Mala’s seat,” Dib couldn’t help pointing out to her.

“Mala’s not here,” retorted Gaz. “Just because you dragged me into space doesn’t mean that I have to get involved with your stupid alien stuff, so leave me alone.”

“It’s not stupid alien stuff! It’s the fate of the entire universe!”

“Hey!” yelled Zim for the third time, popping up practically right behind Dib’s shoulder. “Get out of my Mameen’s chair!”

Gaz lifted her head, opened her eyes, and stared straight at him with venom in her gaze. It took him all of a second to shrink back from her.

“I said leave me alone,” she repeated. “Both of you. Or else I’ll shove you out the airlock so that I don’t have to listen to your stupid voices anymore.”

“Please do it,” called Blis, who was now at a console on the far side of the bridge. “No way I’ll be able to make it through this entire mission hearing _that_.”

Tak and Tenn snickered at that. Dib guessed that he was not going to be super popular with any of them.

The only girl who hadn’t spoken yet, the one named Tee, abruptly swiveled around in her chair. Her eyes, golden yellow in color, glowered at him. “I’m trying to keep the ship on course here, so _all_ of you shut up, or I’ll shove you _all_ out of the airlock!”

With that, all of the girls returned to their work. With Gaz focused on her game and pointedly ignoring him, and Mala off talking to her Earth contact, there was only one person around who would want to communicate with Dib – and Dib hoped that said person wouldn’t bother.

His hopes were dashed when Zim stomped up to him, scowling. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Earth-monkey! You’ve upset Mameen! And I see right through all of your noble save-the-universe talk. I know why you’re _really_ here – because you follow me everywhere! Prying into my privacy, plotting to slice me open on your autopsy table—”

Dib interrupted, “I have bigger things to worry about than you, Zim! And you know with all the time you’ve been spending at my house, I could have gotten you on an autopsy table at any time!”

“Then why didn’t you?” challenged Zim.

Dib did not really have a good answer for that. _I don’t want our situation to change because our constant rivalry provides me with a sense of purpose_ would only result in ridicule, especially because he couldn’t justify it with anything but his confusing, nonsensical emotions.

Unfortunately, his silence turned out to be just as much of a reason for Zim to ridicule him. “HA!” Zim shouted. “Weak, spineless sack of meat! You know that you will never defeat ZIIIIIIM!”

With that, he shoved Dib to the ground in a moment of zeal, then ran off to nowhere in particular. Grumbling, angry at himself for not being ready with an appropriate comeback, Dib began to pick himself up…only to notice someone offering a hand to him.

The only other boy in the Kri Society was standing over him, smiling. Dib blinked, surprised, and then accepted the help standing up. “Thanks. Uh…Skoodge, right? Sorry, for a second I forgot about you.”

“That’s okay, everyone does,” Skoodge replied without missing a beat. “And you must be Dib! I think it’s cool to have you along with us!”

“Really? Well, thanks. I was kind of starting to feel like I’m not welcome here.”

“You’re not!” yelled one of the girls from behind him – he couldn’t tell which one, but honestly, it didn’t really matter.

“Zim and I were always best buddies during our training days,” said Skoodge cheerfully. “He always had such big ideas, and I was always doing my best to help him. So it’s nice to meet some of the new friends he’s made on Earth! You’re his mate, right?”

Dib groaned, exasperated. “Why does everyone always say that? Zim and I are _not_ friends—”

“No, I mean, his _mate_ ,” Skoodge corrected. “You know, like, paired together? A couple?”

Dib felt as if somebody had suddenly smacked him in the face with a scorching-hot griddle. That would certainly explain how his cheeks had gotten so warm, so quickly. “You think we’re _what_?!”

From the other side of the bridge, Zim screeched, “You think we’re _WHAT?!?!?!_ ”

Skoodge looked back and forth between the two of them, puzzled and innocent. “You know, like a couple? I just thought…I mean, you guys spend so much time together! You’re, like, obsessed with each other. So I figured that—”

“ZIM WOULD NEVER PAIR WITH AN INFERIOR HUMAN, AND ESPECIALLY NOT _THAT_ ONE!” Zim stormed over to them, and Dib, who was looking down, away, anywhere but at Zim, noticed Blis cringe and cup her hands over her antennae. “HE IS MY MORTAL ENEMY!”

“H-he’s a disgusting alien who wants to destroy the Earth!” spluttered Dib. God, this was even worse than Zim playing head games at the breakfast table; his cheeks felt hot enough to fry an egg. “And I’m not _obsessed_ with him! It’s just that I’m the only one who can stop his evil plans!”

“Oh.” Skoodge shrugged. “Okay, if you guys say so.”

Dib allowed himself the quickest glimpse at Zim – was it his imagination, or were the Irken’s cheeks a deeper shade of green than normal? – and then the two of them turned their backs on each other, not wanting to give anyone the idea that they so much as _liked_ each other, let alone that they were a couple. He found himself facing Gaz, and noticed that although she was still focused on her game, there was a tiny smirk on her face that hadn’t been there before.

* * *

Mala emerged from her quarters about ten minutes later, which was not nearly enough time for Dib to stop feeling mortified over what had just happened. He still hadn’t so much as made eye contact with Zim, and Zim was staying as far away from him as the space of the bridge would allow.

Looking slightly less agitated than before, Mala crossed over to her captain’s chair, then blinked. “Oh…excuse me, Gazlene. I really should find someplace better for you two to sit…”

“It’s Gaz,” she responded without looking up, but she slid down from the chair without protest.

Mala took her seat and leaned across the console, drumming her fingers against her leg thoughtfully. “How did you get in here, Dib?” she finally asked.

Dib started slightly, not having expected her to question him. “Um, I hacked through the ship’s firewall and opened a maintenance panel.”

“You hacked through? How is that—” She whirled around in her chair and called towards the other side of the room, “Blis! Didn’t you strengthen the firewall like I asked you to?”

“Yes sir, I did,” came the dull-sounding reply.

“I did see that there were some traps in it,” Dib commented. “They were kind of smart, but not really that hard for me to get around. I guess they were just okay, really.”

Blis heaved a deep sigh and said, “Yeah. That’s the story of my life.”

“I’m sure that you did the best you could,” Mala assured her, before turning her chair towards her other side. “Tak…is there any chance of getting this ship back to Earth?”

Tak, who was tapping away at her console, snorted loudly. “Of course there’s not,” she replied. “If we hyperjump again so soon, then this ship _will_ disintegrate, I guarantee it. And since the last jump put us about two shmillion lightyears away from Earth, it’s very likely that we’ll have already lost our battle if we take the time to go back.”

“That’s about what I thought.” Mala reached up to her left antenna, toying with a bead strung on it that was the exact same shade of green as her eyes. “As much as I don’t like it, it looks as though we’re stuck with Dib and Gaz for the time being.”

“Yes!” cheered Dib.

All of the girls – including Gaz – groaned.

“However!” Mala sat up straight, tilting up her chin authoritatively. “Just because you’re stuck here doesn’t mean that you will be participating in our battles! I could never put a couple of children in the Irken Empire’s line of fire. You two will stay safe and sound in the ship, under my strict supervision, and once we have taken care of the threat, you will be returned to Earth immediately.”

Dib mashed his mouth into a grim line. Even if she was saying that, he was still determined to help avert the upcoming universal conquest; there was no way that he wouldn’t take _some_ kind of action.

“I’ll show you to the barracks, then,” she finished, getting to her feet. “Grab your things.”

“We don’t _have_ any things,” grumbled Gaz, and Dib realized that she was right – all he had was his laptop, the notepad that he always kept on him, his cell phone (which probably wouldn’t have any reception in space) and the clothes on his back.

“Oh. No, I suppose you wouldn’t, being stowaways and all.” Mala sat down again awkwardly. “I’ll have to…find some spare supplies from you.”

“Sir, our supplies are stretched thin already!” protested Tak.

“Yes, I know…we’ll just have to make time for a trip to Groceria sometime in the near future.”

“Whatever,” Gaz cut in. “I’m gonna go find someplace to play my game where my brother’s voice can’t make me nauseous.”

She crossed to the far side of the bridge, where there were a couple of unused consoles, and settled herself down at one. Dib watched her go before hesitantly returning his gaze to Mala. He felt a little bad that he’d stressed her out in what was already a stressful situation, but if she could only see that his presence here would be an asset to her, not a burden…!

“Can I ask you something?” he said at last.

Mala glanced in his direction, frowning. “If this is about you taking part in the mission, then I’ve already told you, my answer is a firm no—”

“No, no, it has nothing to do with that,” he assured her quickly. “I was just wondering…how come all your crew members call you ‘sir’?”

She looked blank. “Well, because it’s more respectful that way. Of course I don’t require that kind of deferral, I’ve told everyone that they can feel free to call me plain old Mala, but Irkens are so conditioned to obey their leaders that—”

“I mean, why the word _sir_?” he interjected. “Why not _ma’am_?”

For a second, she looked even blanker than before. Then: “Oh, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten that humans place much more emphasis on gender than we do. Irkens don’t have gender-specific titles or honorifics, so there is no equivalent of _ma’am_ in our culture.”

“Really?” Dib found himself automatically reaching for his notepad. “That’s interesting.” He flipped open the pad, touched his pen to the paper, then thought for a second. “You know, I don’t know a whole lot about your planet or culture, except that you’re called Irkens and you live on Irk and your leader is the Tallest. Do you think that, maybe, I could ask you a few questions about it…?”

That was when Zim, who’d apparently already gotten over his embarrassment, bolted towards them and howled, “MAMEEN! Don’t tell him ANYTHING!”

Mala considered the request as if Zim hadn’t said a word, then shrugged. “I don’t see the harm in that. It can only serve to demystify Zim for you. What would you like to know?”

“MAMEEN, NO! THAT’S MY MORTAL ENEMY!” Zim suddenly scrambled up to her shoulders from behind, clamping both hands over her mouth. “These words are not meant for your FILTHY ears, human Dib! Now STOP prying into my PRIVATE BUSINESS, AND—”

She wrenched his hands away from her mouth, and as she did so, Dib became aware that her entire posture had changed: now she was rigid, strict, and authoritative. “Zim, get off of me,” she ordered firmly.

Zim unclasped his arms from her neck, dropped down, and took a generous step back. His antennae were flattened against his head again. “Yes, Mameen,” he muttered.

All the while, Gir had been watching the unfolding events with his usual uncomprehending interest, and now he chirped at Zim, “You jumpin’ on people! I’m gonna jump on YOUUUU!” And then he proceeded to do just that, most likely leaving Zim preoccupied for at least a few minutes, while Minimoose looked on from the distance.

Mala cleared her throat, straightened out her uniform, and repeated, “What would you like to know, Dib?”

Immediately, so many questions flooded into Dib’s brain that they temporarily clogged up the pipeline to his mouth. Faced with this bottomless reservoir of information that provided him with so much more than any of his other sources so far, it was several seconds before he could sort out his thoughts enough to speak. Finally he blurted out the first thing to stand out clearly among the deluge: “How old can Irkens live to be? Like, how old are you?”

“I can’t really answer that,” said Mala.

“Oh, right, sorry, never ask a woman her age, I wasn’t trying to be—”

“No, no, I mean – I can’t break down Irken ages in a way that would make sense to you. First of all, the Irken Empire spans several thousand planets, each one with a different day and year cycle based on its orbit and rotation. We do have an Irken Standard Time based on our own planet, but even then, it’s not anywhere close to the same as Earth’s; I know that our years are much shorter than Earth-years, but I can’t even give you a proper conversion rate, as the mathematics are almost impossible to calculate. Besides that, the universe is riddled with time distortions, such as warps and wormholes, that further complicate the entire process. So I can’t give you an actual number for Irken ages or lifespans. I _can_ , however, tell you that I am a _makt_.”

He blinked. “You’re what?”

She reached around to her PAK, summoning a floating display screen on it, and displayed an image for him: four Irkens in progressive order of height, starting with a baby-sized one, ending with a taller and slightly wrinkled one who resembled Mala.

“Because of the difficulty of tracking our ages with a number, Irken ages are divided into four basic categories,” she explained. “Newly created Irkens are called _smeets_.” The picture of the baby Irken lit up in response to her words. “Smeets are kept in underground training facilities on Irk. We do keep track of their age in years – Irk-years – as a way to keep tabs on their development. Most stay in training for the standard twenty-five Irk-years before being graduated. But I need to emphasize, twenty-five years for them is not the equivalent of a twenty-five-year-old human. They’re still quite young, developmentally, when they graduate.”

“How young?” asked Dib. “Like…can you tell me what the human age equivalent would be?”

“Hmm…” Mala tugged on her antennae thoughtfully. “Perhaps about six, seven years old? Forgive me, I’m not completely familiar with human ages.”

“Okay. So they graduate when they’re about seven in human years,” he said. “What happens then?”

“Then they become _jutes._ ” The next picture on the screen lit up. “This is the adolescent age – similar to the stage that you’re at right now, actually. Jute is the stage at which we begin our serious work. You’ve got scientists, technicians, but of course most go on to be soldiers—”

He had been furiously scribbling her words into his notepad, but now took a step back, appalled. “What?! Irken kids more or less my age become _soldiers_?!”

“That’s what happens on a planet that prioritizes its military above all else,” she answered dryly. “Irkens live to conquer. Anyway, jutes can still be moved around to different specialties to find one that suits them. You don’t receive your final assignment until you are a _sloff_.” The third picture lit up. “Irkens are considered sloffs when they have reached their maximum height, which of course determines where they will end up. If you’re tall, get ready for an important career. If you’re short, welcome to menial labor for the rest of your life.”

“So what’s the difference between _sloff_ and, uh, _makt_?” His tongue twisted uncomfortably around the foreign words.

“Not much. Sloffs are young adults, relatively new at their jobs; makts are older adults with more experience. A makt can be anything from middle-aged to geriatric.”

“And you’re a makt?”

“Exactly.”

Dib looked her over and guessed that her age classification made sense; she was definitely tall enough to have reached her full height – much taller than most other Irkens, as far as he knew – and there were a few subtle wrinkles in her face that probably wouldn’t have been present in a young adult. Still, he felt that a few more examples would help him get a better grasp on this whole thing. “So are your crew…sloffs?” he asked tentatively.

“Tak, Tee, and Blis are,” she replied. “Tenn and Skoodge are jutes.”

Now for the obvious question, which he’d been putting off asking because it triggered memories of recent embarrassing events. “What about Zim?”

“He’s a jute as well.”

“Right.” So by Irken standards, Zim was actually around Dib’s age, which…wasn’t all that much of a surprise. He finished up his notes, flipped the page, and then said, “Next question. How exactly do you know Zim?”

Mala leaned back in her captain’s chair; her floating screen went dark, although it didn’t retract back into her PAK. She crossed one leg over the other, one of her feet bobbing. “He’s the closest I’ve ever had to my own smeet. Him and Skoodge both.”

“I thought Irkens didn’t have parents.”

“We don’t. We’re made from stored DNA samples that are mixed by the Control Brains – those are the artificial intelligences that more or less run the Empire – into embryos. We develop into smeets, at which point we’re hatched and sent to work.”

“Then what’s this whole thing about you being his…what’s the word you used… _Mameen?_ ”

A smile twitched across her mouth. “That was almost by chance. You see, I was an Elite, next in line to become Tallest, and I’d been issued breeding rights. Um, oh, we don’t breed like humans do, either…I’ll have to explain that next. Anyway, it was no use; Irk is too polluted for natural conception to work anymore. When I tried to bring a smeet into the world, they all had horrible birth defects, and they died at once. I was upset about this, so Tallest Miyuki—”

She broke off, smacking her forehead.

“You know what would be much better than telling you all of this? _Showing_ you. I mean, my PAK contains all of my memories! So here…” She pushed the floating screen towards him, and Dib found himself taking a step closer, as if he could actually pass through and into the recollection that she was about to show him. “Take a look.”

* * *

_“Mala, dear, what’s wrong?”_

_Almighty Tallest Miyuki leaned over her successor with obvious concern. Miyuki looked every bit the polished, collected aristocrat that she was – she had upward-tilted blue eyes, an uncommon color, and wore the mechanical exosuit that was traditional for Tallests – and her subjects all respected and feared her. Few people were close enough to see the genuinely caring side of herself that she was exposing now._

_Mala, who was one of those few people, twiddled the bead on her antennae (a gift from Miyuki that she’d received back when they first became friends) and stared at the floor. The two of them were in the Tallest Tower, going through the motions of another workday, but she had found herself unable to concentrate on any of her duties. “Nothing really. It’s just…what happened yesterday…”_

_“You mean, that latest smeet that you attempted to conceive?” Miyuki tilted her head to the side, puzzled. “You’re_ still _upset about that?”_

 _“Of course I am! I mean, it died before it could even receive its PAK—”_

_“Well, yes, it was defective. Even if it had lived, the Control Brains never would have agreed to give it a PAK.”_

_“And that’s just…horrible!”_

_“Not really.” That was the thing about Miyuki: she could be nice, but she wasn’t empathetic the way that Mala was. No other Irken was as empathetic as that, really. “It only lived for a few seconds, and it achieved nothing. So we have no reason to mourn its passing.”_

_Mala sighed. In a culture that had little respect for individuals, she hardly even had the words to explain that she wasn’t just grieving over her most recent dead smeet; she was also grieving over the possibilities that had been lost with its inevitable death, the possibilities of becoming a mother, of being able to raise a child on her own, of watching how things would turn out without the intervention of the regimented training programs. She had wanted her own children for as long as she could remember – something that she had very quickly learned to shut up about, as it was considered a dangerous quirk. Irkens weren’t supposed to have parental instincts anymore. Then again, Irkens also weren’t supposed to be hyperempathetic, yet here she was, slotted into the second-highest position in the land thanks to her ability to fake normal behavior._

_“I really wish that there was some way I could help,” said Miyuki earnestly. “I hate to see you carrying on like this.”_

_“Thank you, My Tallest…but unfortunately, unless you can somehow clean up our planet of all its pollution, I don’t think that there’s anything you can do.”_

_“Hmm.” Miyuki stroked her chin with the two fingers left exposed by her gauntlets. “Perhaps…or perhaps not. Maybe I could…oh, yes, that’s a brilliant idea!”_

_Mala took a step forward uncertainly. “My Tallest?”_

_Miyuki beamed and clapped her hands together. “Yes, yes, why didn’t I think of it before? I know how to make you feel better, Mala! I can grant you special access to the Smeetery – then you can finally satisfy your obsession with smeets, whatever it may be, and move on with your life!”_

_Mala was stunned. Although Miyuki hadn’t exactly phrased it delicately, access to the Smeetery was unprecedented; Irkens who were jute and older were not permitted to the underground facilities, which ensured that no familial emotions could develop. Tallests were allowed down there, of course, but they had more important things to worry about than hatching and routine education._

_“Really, Miyuki?” she asked, hardly managing to keep the tremble out of her voice. “You…you’d do that for me?”_

_“Anything for my favorite successor!” Miyuki patted her cheerfully on the shoulder. “As a matter of fact, there should be a new batch of smeets ready to form a complete creche any minute now! Though I must warn you, you shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t really acknowledge your presence. After all, we design them not to pay attention to adults.”_

_“Yes, I know…” That was one of the many reasons why Mala had been hoping to raise a naturally-born smeet. “But it’s a privilege to be down there, even if all I do is look at them. Thank you so much.”_

_“Don’t mention it! Go on, go get this parental thing out of your system. I’ll update your PAK so that the guard robots know that you’re—”_

_At that moment, there was a muffled THUD, as of some far-away explosion, and all the lights went out without so much as a flicker of warning. Mala and Miyuki looked at each other, seeking the outlines of each other’s faces in the darkness, then rushed to the nearest window. Beneath the Tallest Tower, the city spread out in all directions, but now it was lit by only the smoggy starlight from overhead._

_“A blackout?” Miyuki turned around slowly. “I should…probably look into that. Service drones!” she barked. “Bring me some light!”_

_A dozen service drone Irkens, each with an elaborate lantern contraption strapped to their head, immediately rushed into the room from every door. Soon the lighting looked almost normal, aside from the fact that all of the computer systems were down as well. Miyuki looked around helplessly, uncertain where to start in the absence of her electronic crutches._

_“Do you want me to stay here and help you, My Tallest?” asked Mala._

_Miyuki waved her hand dismissively. “No, no. Go on and look around the Smeetery, then come back and help me. You’re not any good to me when you’re distracted. Let me see…all of our systems our down, so you can probably just walk right in. Hang on, let me get you a light…”_

_Fifteen minutes later, Mala was on her way to Irk’s underside, bearing a portable lantern and a handwritten note from Miyuki giving her permission to enter the facilities, on the off-chance that anyone took a break from freaking out about the blackout long enough to question her. None of the elevator platforms were working, but you didn’t get to be an Elite Commander without taking a few risks, so she just leapt down one of the vacant shafts as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, grabbing handholds to slow herself down along the way, until she’d finally reached the forbidden zone._

_She’d never seen the Smeetery before, and even now her view wasn’t the best, as the only light came from her lantern and dim emergency bulbs bolted along the walls. Without the humming of various machines and computer systems, everything was preternaturally quiet. Irken children weren’t exactly known for crying and screaming; they were too well-trained for that._

_Lifting her lantern, she began to walk downhill. The hatcheries and upload chambers were all offline, but just past them was the room that should contain the most recently hatched creche, a sort of waiting area until they received their permanent housing assignment. She reached down, touched an emergency switch in the doorframe, and it slid open before her._

_A hundred newborn smeets were inside the room, and not a single one of them reacted._

_She took a deep breath, suddenly oppressively aware of how bizarre it was for her to be here, looking at these children. She hadn’t even_ seen _a smeet since she herself was one._

_As Miyuki had predicted, the new creche (Creche 127-AB, as she would learn after the power was restored) paid no attention to her. Two hundred glassy eyes were fixed on their motionless creche-carer, waiting for it to begin issuing orders again. They could wait forever, if necessary._

_Mala’s amazement gave way to a sense of mild dismay. There was something disheartening about seeing a large group of living children who were as frozen by the blackout as all of the lights and machines, conditioned so thoroughly that she might as well have been invisible to them. Even if they were artificially created, they could still become vibrant, valuable individuals if given a chance…but Irk took that chance away from them minutes after their birth. An achy, hollow feeling in her chest grew worse and worse as she stood there, staring—_

_Somebody tugged on the leg of her pants._

_Mala jolted so badly that she nearly dropped her lantern. Standing right next to her was a tiny figure, noticeably smaller than any of the others in the room, gazing at her with huge eyes that were nearly luminous._

_A smeet? A smeet was acknowledging her…?_

_“You have a light,” noted the smeet._

_She blinked. “Yes…yes, I do.”_

_“You must be better than the stupid creche-carers,” it said, with a kind of adorable derision. “_ They _don’t have lights.”_

_Unable to resist, she crouched down closer to its level, getting herself a better view. The smeet was male, judging by the antennae, and he wore the simple one-piece jumper that all smeets wore. It seemed slightly large on him, as if none of the clothing generators were used to dressing someone so small. And he was small – very, very small._

_“What’s your name?” she asked. If he was going to actually speak to her, then she might as well know._

_“Zim.”_

_“That’s a nice name.”_

_“It’s the best name!” he declared with such absolute conviction that she had to hold back a laugh. As it was, she found herself grinning idiotically, a face-splitting smile that was much happier than any expression on her face since yesterday’s dismal events._

_Zim smiled right back up at her. A little warning twinge went through her – if a smeet displayed such a level of passion, such disregard for protocol, then there had to be something wrong with it. Mistakes did slip through the cracks all the time (she was beginning to suspect that she was one such mistake) but for a child to act so brazen, so soon, was a bad sign. There was no way that he’d make it through training, no way that he would be allowed to grow up. He—_

_“Are you my Mameen?” he suddenly asked._

_The words went through Mala like a blast from a taze gun. Her little warning voice flared up once more, screaming that this meant that something was_ absolutely _wrong with him, before she quashed it with pure emotion. How long had she dreamed of having a smeet look at her and call her Mameen? How long had she striven for this very moment without success – only to have it given to her now, just because of a whim from Tallest Miyuki?_

 _Zim was still gazing at her expectantly, and with her metaphorical heart reduced to a pile of goo, there was really only one answer that she could give him. She reached out and touched his cheek gently. “I can be,” she said. “If you want me to.”_

_“Of course I do!” he exclaimed. “That’s why I said it! Because you’re tall and cool and you have a light!” He grinned at her for another moment, then suddenly darted off towards the crowd of ninety-nine other smeets. “Skoodge! Hey, Skoodge! I found our Mameen! You should come and meet her…!”_

_And Mala, standing near the door and struggling to pull herself together, thought she knew that she’d just experienced a moment that would change the course of her entire life – but later, she would realize that back then, she didn’t know the half of it._

…

“And that’s it! That’s how I became Zim’s Mameen!” Mala looked adoringly at the floating screen, where her memory of baby Zim was still displayed. “Isn’t he cute?”

Dib wrinkled up his face. He wasn’t ready to associate the word _cute_ with anything Zim-related, particularly given what had happened earlier. More importantly, no matter how cute Zim may or may not have been as a baby, that didn’t change the fact that he was an insane, murderous alien who had tried to destroy the Earth several times.

However, while the memories hadn’t done much to change his opinion on Zim, he realized that despite his initial suspicion, he was starting to like Mala more and more. Unlike most adults he’d met, she was earnest and open and didn’t try to jerk him around, and she had much more (for lack of a better word) _humanity_ than Zim or Tak or the other Kri Society crewmembers. How could he be afraid of someone who got weepy over Zim calling her his mom?

He finished up the notes he was jotting down, then asked, “And then you got shot down over Irk by these Control Brains after that?”

Mala nodded, her face suddenly grim. “That was when Zim was a year-six smeet. I visited him and Skoodge a lot before…that happened, but today was the first time I’ve seen Zim in quite a while.”

“Well, unfortunately, he isn’t ‘cute’ anymore,” he informed her. “He’s a giant jerk and attempted planet-destroyer.”

Dib expected her to respond with some sort of grave statement about the effects of Irken training regimens, or express her dismayed shock that her adoptive son had fallen so far, or else to deny that Zim could ever do anything wrong, but instead she just laughed. “Trust me, Dib, I know what he’s been up to. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, remember? And trust me when I say that he really isn’t all that different from the child I knew back then. He just needs to divert his passion into something more…constructive.”

“Good luck with that,” he said, crossing his arms, and she laughed again.

“Mameen?” a new voice suddenly interjected. Dib practically jumped out of his sneakers, but fortunately it wasn’t Zim who had approached them, it was Skoodge. He faced Mala quizzically. “Weren’t we going to have dinner?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, it is about that time, isn’t it?” Mala pushed out her chair, recalled the floating screen back into her PAK, and then stretched her arms above her head. “Come on, everyone, dinnertime!”

A collective sigh rose up from the Kri girls like a mist. One by one, they abandoned their consoles and shuffled out of the bridge; first Tak, then Tee, then Tenn, and finally Blis. Skoodge hurried to catch up with them. Gaz jammed her GS4 into her pocket and followed them without acknowledging Dib’s existence in the slightest.

That was when Zim managed to extract himself from Gir’s excited tackling at last, and while his robot rushed off to see what food was available, Zim narrowed his eyes at Dib. “Putrid human!” he spat. “Interfering with my plans on Earth, following me here, and now coercing my Mameen into revealing all of my carefully guarded secrets…!”

Dib gritted his teeth. “I’m not here for you, spaceboy! I’m here to stop the destruction of the universe!”

“HA! I laugh in the face of your attempted heroics! HA, HA, HA!” Zim’s so-called laugh was forced, harsh, and ear-grating. “This Kri Society is full of failures and defectives. I’m just here to hitch a ride to the new Tallest, and as soon as I meet up with him, I’ll ask him to give me a deadly laser large enough to obliterate your entire gargantuan head!”

Comments about the size of his head were so common that Dib almost didn’t notice them anymore, at least when they came from Zim; and besides, there was a better way to trip up his nemesis than merely protesting. “What about Mala?” he challenged. “Is _she_ a failure or a defective?”

But Zim just squinted his eyes into ever-tinier slits, then marched to the door that everyone else had gone through, kicking up his feet too high in his annoying, pseudo-military walk.


	5. Revoltingness and Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...okay, apparently every three weeks is just what I can manage. Got it.
> 
> Also HA HA I apparently lied about this chapter having action in it, because guess what, everything is way longer than I originally thought it would be! Also, I felt like certain events in this chapter were too important to just rush over.

The Kri ship’s galley resembled nothing so much as a school cafeteria. Four long tables lined with little circular seats filled most of the space, and at one end of the room was the “lunch line” – a buffet-style countertop where Mala had placed several dishes and was now doling out the evening’s rations. Luckily, there wasn’t much of a line, as the Kri girls (and Skoodge) had already received their dinners and were heading off to sit in a cluster at one of the tables.

Zim marched self-importantly towards the line, while Dib let himself fall behind Gaz. Her head was still bowed over her game. “Don’t you think it’s kind of early for dinner?” he asked, hoping to prod her into a conversation. “Closer to lunchtime, really…”

She ignored him. He repressed a sigh, finishing the thought aloud more for his own benefit than hers: “Then again, we don’t really know what time cycle they’re on here. It’s probably different from Earth’s.”

They approached the center of the serve-counter, and Mala handed each of them a plate. Gaz screwed up her face in an expression of disgust. Suddenly, Dib realized that being on an alien ship, with alien company, in an alien time cycle, also meant that he was going to be confronted with alien _food_.

He looked down at his plate with trepidation. It was divided into thirds, like a TV dinner tray, and presented him with three different and uniquely disgusting dishes: something that looked like spaghetti noodles, but bright purple, smothered in a black-and-neon-green sauce; a soft, chunky, mucus green substance wrapped in what resembled a flatbread of some kind; and a salad of unknown tentacles, insect parts, and immensely wrong-colored vegetable slices. Dib gulped nervously, lifting up his head to make eye contact with Mala. “Umm…what is this stuff?” he asked.

Mala rubbed the back of her neck. “Erm, mostly frozen food and ready-to-eat meals. The galley equipment on this ship doesn’t work very well, and we need things that can be stored for a long time and don’t require much cooking.”

Gaz poked at the burrito-like substance with a fork. “Is this safe for us to eat?”

“Of course,” said Mala without hesitation. Dib wondered how she, an alien with limited knowledge of the human species, could be so confident in her answer…but she hadn’t led them astray so far, and besides, this was the only food available.

Zim, who was standing at the end of the serve-counter, scoffed aloud. “Ignorant dookie buffoons! Baked mooshminkies, even the microwave kind, are far beyond the deliciousness capabilities of Earth consumables!”

Aside from a quick glance in that direction, Dib ignored him, crossing with Gaz over to the table where the Kri girls and Skoodge had settled in. As soon as he approached, the girls cut off their conversation, glaring at him in a way that he was intimately familiar with – it was the You Are Not Welcome To Sit At My Table glare. This really _was_ just an interstellar school cafeteria, wasn’t it?

Sighing, he moved on to the next table, which was completely empty. Behind him, he heard Tenn say, “Oh, you’re fine, Gaz. _You_ can sit with us.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Gaz replied. “I can’t let my idiot brother wander off and get himself messed up. I need to return him to Dad in at least semi-decent condition.”

“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.

The girls all returned to their conversation, turning their backs to him. Tak was saying something that he couldn’t quite hear, but he did notice that Tenn, Tee, and Blis were all leaning forward much further than was necessary, staring at her with rapt attention – fawning over her, almost. He brushed it off and sat down.

Once seated, he wasn’t exactly eager to start the process of actually choking down the food, but he supposed that he had to at least try. He scooped up some of the noodle-things with his fork, tentatively raised it to his mouth, gave it an overcautious nibble, and…

“Huh.” He popped the rest of the forkful into his mouth, chewed meditatively, and swallowed. “This actually isn’t all that bad.” He couldn’t quite describe the flavor of the dish – it certainly didn’t taste like normal spaghetti – but even if the taste wasn’t comparable to Earth food, it wasn’t as putrid as he’d feared. He even sort of liked it.

Gaz side-eyed him, ate a mouthful of the same dish, then shuddered and half-retched. “What are you, demented?!” she demanded. “This stuff is horrible! If that was some stupid attempt to trick me, then I’m going to dissect you with my spork and feast on your blood instead!”

“What? No!” Dib leaned back from her. “It really doesn’t taste bad!” He took another bite to demonstrate his honesty; the same indescribable-but-surprisingly-pleasant taste spread over his tongue. “See?”

She examined him, eyes bulging suspiciously, searching him for any telltale signs of lying…and then, finding none, scowled and turned away. “You’re even more messed up than I thought.”

While she picked at the edges of her food and he dug into his with much more self-assurance, Zim thunked his plate down a few seats away, apparently having been similarly exiled from sitting with the girls. Right now he was too occupied with eating to start spewing insults, but Dib knew that it would only be a matter of time. He also noticed Mala sitting at the head of the other table; there was no food in front of her. He wondered fleetingly if she had sacrificed her rations so that the two stowaways could eat.

For a couple of minutes, the galley was almost quiet, filled with only the murmur of conversations that he wasn’t invited to join, the sound of silverware clattering against dishes, and occasionally, Gir noisily devouring a morsel of food thrown to him by Zim. Dib had nearly polished off his rations when Skoodge suddenly dropped into the seat across from him. “Hey, guys!” he exclaimed. It seemed like he was the only one who had any desire to socialize with Dib.

“Hey, Skoodge.” Dib wasn’t going to turn down a chance to talk to an alien – if Skoodge was even half as nice as Mala, then he could also be a valuable source of information on the Irken race. “What’s up?”

“Oh, not much. I finished my dinner, so I wanted to see how you were getting along. What do you think of the Kri Society so far?”

Dib scraped his fork along the last dregs of sauce on his plate, deep in thought, then answered noncommittally: “I’m not sure yet. But, like, I mean…it’s good that you want to save the universe. Plus Mala’s pretty cool.”

Skoodge smiled. “Yeah, Mameen is definitely cool. None of us would be here without her – she’s the one who holds us all together.”

From a few seats away, Zim – the master of not listening when he was actually being addressed, and eavesdropping the rest of the time – shouted out, “And you never would have met her if it wasn’t for me! You should be _thanking_ me for that, Skoodge!”

“…huh. You’re right, Zim,” said Skoodge brightly. “Thank you!”

Zim blinked, startled. He must have been more accustomed to demanding things than actually receiving whatever it was he’d asked for. “Uh…you’re welcome.”

“Speaking of holding together,” interjected Dib, eager to steer the conversation ball out of Zim’s court, “I’ve been wondering how all of you ended up here with Mala. I don’t know Tenn or Blis or Tee…or you, really…but I met Tak before, and she didn’t really seem like the universe-saving type to me. She tried to destroy the Earth just to impress her Tallest!”

“Yeah, she told me about that. She’s got military training, so…I guess that makes sense.” Skoodge shrugged, as if the near-annihilation of an inhabited planet was no more noteworthy than a spilled glass of water. Before Dib could make an indignant comment, Skoodge continued, “It’s kind of funny, because she was the first one here. I mean, the first one Mameen recruited. I was the third – I’m the only one who she had to track down specially.”

“So how _did_ you end up here?” asked Dib, aware that not too far away, Zim was also hanging on every word while trying (and failing) to appear that he wasn’t doing so.

“Well, it all started after I completed my part in Operation Impending Doom Two. I worked really hard to earn my place as an Invader, and even though I got assigned to the hardest planet, I was the first one to finish my conquest! But…” Skoodge shifted uncomfortably. “For whatever reason, the Tallest – Red and Purple – they really didn’t like me. I don’t know why. I always listened to every single thing they said and did the best I could do for the Empire. So they kind of strung me along. They shot me out of a cannon, they said they’d promote me if I did some military training—”

Zim suddenly butt in with, “Yes, on Hobo 13! Zim recalls quite clearly!”

“Right,” Skoodge agreed. “But after that, I couldn’t contact them anymore. They wouldn’t answer my calls. I kind of waited around for a while, ‘cause I kept thinking that they would have to answer eventually, but…they never did. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to hop in my voot cruiser and head towards Earth. I thought that maybe Zim could use my help.”

“HEY!” objected Zim. “A true Invader needs help from NO ONE! You would have been nothing but dead weight, clinging to me like a hideous scent of hideousness as I ascended to become the supreme overlord of Earth’s disgusting people!”

“But…I’d successfully conquered one planet already, and you—”

“SILENCE!”

Skoodge lowered his antennae, abashed. “Maybe you’re right…I just didn’t know what else to do. But anyway, on my way to Earth, I was hailed by an unknown ship. I couldn’t believe it when I accepted the call and saw Mameen on my screen – I mean, I thought that she’d died when I was still a smeet! And she was happy to see me too, and she welcomed me aboard, then told me about what she was doing. About how there were other Irkens like me, who’d done their best for Irk, but were left in the dust for no good reason. Until then, I’d thought that it was just something wrong with me, but if somebody as incredible as Mameen could be treated that way…I knew that she had to be right. And I joined her on her way to Earth to find Zim!”

After a pause to process everything – and to finish jotting in his notepad, which he’d pulled out again – Dib said, “And she went out of her way to track you down?”

“Yeah. Because I was her smeet – me and Zim both. So she was actively looking for us. Everybody else here, she just ran into them because while she was flying, she picked up Irken communication signatures in unusual places and went to check them out. Except for Tak. They ran into each other before Mameen even had this ship.”

Dib’s pencil crossed the page in leaps and bounds. “So most of you are here by random chance?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Huh.” He glanced up for a split second before resuming his furious scribbling. “Is that why there are…uh, not very many of you?”

Skoodge nodded. “Mameen says that lots of Irkens would join up with us if they knew we were here, but that we have to lay low for now. We’re making our way towards Irk, and once we get there, she’s going to rally the troops, get more people to join up with us.”

At that moment, Zim made an overdramatic gagging sound in the back of his throat, standing up on his seat for added height.

“Your disloyalty and treasonous treachery is so sickening that I’ve lost my appetite,” he explained, nudging his plate away with his foot for emphasis (it was already empty). The plate teetered along the edge of the table, and Gir peeked over the table at it with his mouth watering, but Zim didn’t notice as he continued his speech in an even louder voice: “All of you fools disgust me! You are as spineless and blobby as…as blob…things! You were all too weak to serve the Tallest properly, so you’ve gathered here, trying to convince yourselves that your pitiful rebellion can stand up against the mighty Irken Empire! Zim is ashamed to be seen with you! I laugh in the face of your pathetic conspiring!” True to his word, he did laugh – the very loudest, harshest, and most grating fake laugh he’d ever forced out. “An Invader as ingenious as me does not belong here with the likes of all you!”

Dead silence greeted his grandiose proclamation. If looks could kill, then Zim would have been pierced with four deadly spears, one from each of the Kri girls at the other table. Skoodge seemed stunned; Mala just looked uncomfortable, almost pained. Even Gaz, who’d stopped trying to choke down the food and had been focused on her GS4 for quite some time, lifted her eyes with mild interest.

Then, the Kri girls dissolved into a flurry of whispers, all of them talking at once, their words rapid enough to sound like distant rodents skittering in the walls. Dib had a sudden mental image of something similar happening when he’d been eavesdropping on the bridge, after Zim had proposed declaring allegiance to the new Tallest. At the time, Dib had assumed that they were mocking Zim, but now…the tone wasn’t quite right for that. They weren’t quite ridiculing; it was more like they were passing around some juicy secret. Like they all knew something that Zim didn’t.

It was at this point that Mala finally stood up, her face tighter than it had been since the initial stress of discovering her two young stowaways. “Zim,” she said flatly. “May I have a word with you?”

Zim flicked one antennae, turning to her. “Eh? Of course.”

He stood there, apparently waiting for her to say whatever it was she was going to say. One awkward pause later, Mala realized that he didn’t understand her silent implication, and she sighed. “In _private_ , Zim.”

He blinked. Then: “…oh, I _see_. You want to share privileged information with me! Things that certain _humans_ in this room are not allowed to know!” He turned to sneer at Dib and Gaz, but especially Dib, practically thumbing his nose at them. “I don’t blame you at all, Mameen! Their inferior meat-brains do not begin to match the complexity of ours…”

As he waffled on, rehashing all of the insults that Dib had already heard, Mala apparently got fed up with waiting for him to take a hint and follow her. She walked right up to him and tucked him under her arm like he was a beach ball, then headed straight for the door. The last Dib heard before Zim was whisked out was, “…and furthermore, Mameen, why are you even hanging around these failures? Now that you’ve joined forces with me, we can…”

As soon as his voice had faded, the Kri girls immediately burst into louder conversation, loud enough that Dib could hear it this time.

“ _Finally_ ,” declared Tenn. “He’s _finally_ going to get a reality check. Just in time, too. I don’t think that I could stand listening to him go on about his superiority even one more time…!”

Tak shook her head. “He’s not going to listen. He never does. I even tried to tell him, but—”

“He’ll listen to _her_ ,” Tenn insisted. “ _She’ll_ make it sound more credible than if it had come from the mouths of Red and Purple themselves!”

“If they weren’t dead from a Florpus hole tearing them limb from limb,” added Blis. “Lucky them.”

“Maybe he’ll collapse into an amorphous puddle of shame and despair,” Tee said. “And we can bottle up the puddle and sell it to other Irkens. Lots of them would be happy to know he’s finally going to get what’s coming to him.”

Dib frowned uncomprehendingly. He leaned forward and asked Skoodge, “What are they talking about?”

Skoodge raised and lowered his antennae, opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head. If he knew what was going on, then it wasn’t a source of joy for him like it was for the girls. But Dib did receive an answer to his question…from Tak.

“What’s _happening_ , festering human,” she began, turning sharply to face him, “is that after Zim insulting us with impunity all day, he’s about to see that he’s just like us…only worse.”

“Just like you?” echoed Dib. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It _means_ ,” she enunciated, as if talking to an idiot child, “that everyone you see here is a loyal, hardworking soldier who was screwed over by the Irken Empire in exchange for our service. The only difference between us and Zim is that we were all at least _somewhat_ competent, while he was a failure from the day he was hatched! In fact, he’s the reason why some of us are here – certainly the reason why _I’m_ here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Because Zim helped to stop you from destroying the Earth, is that it?”

She ground her teeth together. “It was the most _humiliating_ defeat of my entire career! Oh, don’t get smug, you pungent bag of pestilence – you only won because you vandalized poor Mimi! When I took off in my ship’s escape pod, I flew as far as I could, knowing that I could never face the Tallest again after what had happened. Eventually, I ran out of fuel and came in for a landing on the planet Garbagia.”

Dib recognized the name; earlier in the day, Mala said that she’d salvaged the ship from that planet. “And you met Mala there?” he guessed.

“Yes. _She_ was there.” Suddenly Tak’s voice resonated with a note of admiration, and she lifted her chin slightly. “I recognized her, of course; I’m old enough to remember when she was the successor to Tallest Miyuki. The rightful heir to the throne, stranded there on a planet of discarded refuse…and she told me everything. How the Control Brains attacked her. How they held her underground for decades of experiments. How she escaped – and how there were other Irken soldiers out there like her, others like _me_ , being mistreated due to the gross flaws of Irken society. She asked me to help her make a change. Of course I said yes. She should have been the Tallest, after all, and if she had, maybe I would have been allowed to re-take the Elite Test and never would have had to tangle with a defective like Zim in the first place! Together, we found an old, trashed Colonizer ship on Garbagia, got it into working order with spare parts that we found—”

“And then she used it to come pick up Zim on Earth.” Dib folded his arms, unable to prevent a tiny, smug smile from wriggling across his mouth. “That must have been a rude awakening for you, huh?”

Her lip twitched upwards into a brief snarl. “She was open with me from the start about her past with Zim. I don’t agree with her decisions…but being the First Officer means showing loyalty even when you disagree. Despite this flaw with her empathy, Elite Mala is ten times the Irken leader that Red and Purple ever were. I’d follow her anywhere.”

He mentally noted her choice of words: _this flaw with her empathy_. Mala had spoken kindly of “defective” Irkens, those who were different that had slipped through the cracks, but evidently Tak wasn’t so easily swayed on that front.

He decided not to push his luck with her anymore, instead asking the other girls, “And it’s the same with all of you? You were all”—to use Tak’s phrase—“screwed over by Irk?”

Tee folded her arms haughtily. “Not me.”

“But they were _going_ to,” Skoodge chimed in. “They hadn’t _yet_ , but Mameen said that the new Tallest had you under watch.”

“My screwing was done and over with,” said Blis in her dull voice. “But Elite Mala just _had_ to dig it up again.”

Tenn seemed to hesitate, then lifted her hand, as if she was in a classroom and requesting permission to speak. “I was an Invader in Operation Impending Doom Two. I specialized in war ops. I was doing well with my invasion of the planet Meekrob, but then this big package was delivered to me – I thought it was a Mega Doomer, the Tallest had said that they were sending me one – and when I opened it, all these horrible…” She shuddered. “These horrible malfunctioning SIR units swarmed out! They were _everywhere!_ Firing weapons, destroying my base, screaming and laughing in those awful shrill voices…!”

“You got a big ol’ dirt crusty on your shoe,” an awful, shrill voice suddenly said. Gir’s head popped up beside Tenn, fragments of the plate he’d gobbled up still clinging to his mouth. “Can I lick it?”

Tenn let out a shriek that lasted for at least ten seconds. Before Dib could do more than cover his ears, Tak sprang up, shouting, “What are you still doing in here, you piece of useless circuitry?!” With that, she grabbed Gir and punted him out the door into the bridge…and Gir, judging by his delighted laughter, obviously thought that it was all a part of some demented game.

“Horrible little creatures like _him_ destroyed my mission!” cried Tenn, yanking on her antennae in agitation. “My cover was blown! Even worse than that, I completely lost my nerve! And the Tallest – they – they said that the package with those monsters wasn’t supposed to be for me, but they didn’t apologize, or try to help me! They just left me stranded on Meekrob while…those… _things_ …!”

Her eyes, frozen wide, stared off into the distance as if viewing an internal replay of the SIRs destroying her life. Tak reached over and patted Tenn’s shoulder awkwardly, saying, “At least you’re here now, thanks to Elite Mala. And you never have to go back to that planet again…”

Skoodge, who definitely seemed to be a bit more experienced with the whole sympathy thing, quickly intervened, hurrying over to grab Tenn’s hand and mutter something soothing to her. Tak watched him for a couple of minutes, then turned back to the two humans (Gaz, as usual, had been playing her game and hadn’t even lost her focus when Tenn screamed) and snapped, “I think that’s enough probing from you.”

“Yeah, _Dib_ ,” said Gaz without looking up.

“Come with me to the stateroom,” Tak ordered. “I’m not going to have you wandering around and causing trouble while Elite Mala is busy!”

Dib’s eyes flicked back and forth across the galley. “But…won’t she be back soon? I mean, I kind of want to know what she and Zim are talking about…”

“Well, that’s just too bad, because it’s none of your business. So follow me, or I’ll take your sister’s suggestion and throw you out of the airlock.”

And, when he considered the strength she’d shown in chucking Gir out the door earlier, he decided that he’d have a better chance of finding out what was going on if he just did as she said.

* * *

The stateroom turned out to be a narrow room off the bridge, almost a hallway, with bunks jutting out from the rear wall: five above, five below. The opposite wall was lined with ten mid-sized lockboxes, presumably for the crew to store their personal possessions. Dib noticed that a couple of the boxes had powered-down SIR units placed on top of them, tucked away where they couldn’t upset Tenn, but still waiting to serve if they were needed. He wondered if Gir would be willing or able to sit that still for that long; somehow, he doubted it.

Honestly, he was a bit surprised by the presence of the bunks, since he’d thought that Irkens didn’t sleep, but apparently _didn’t_ was different from _couldn’t_. Still, the beds obviously hadn’t been used much. This was more of a storage area than anything else, and perhaps a place where the crew could come and relax for a few minutes, trying to ease off on the stress of knowing that the universe was in danger.

He took one of the unclaimed bottom bunks; Gaz took the one next to him; both of them were left to their own devices. Gaz didn’t care in the slightest, just warned her brother that he’d better not disturb her peace and quiet, then flopped down to continue her game. Dib sat and slowly reviewed his notes from earlier, occasionally flipping to a blank page and writing down a question that he wanted to ask at his next opportunity. All the while, he was keeping an ear towards the door, listening for Mala announcing directions or even for Zim’s grating declarations – anything that would let him know that they’d finished up their conversation. But things remained quiet.

He combed through his notes thoroughly, killing as much time as possible. He pulled out his phone and checked the time; it was late afternoon back on Earth. His dad would probably be starting dinner. When they didn’t show up, what would he think had happened to them? Or…would he even think of them at all?

Dib slid down from the bunk and opened the door, peeking into the bridge. The crew were all seated at their individual consoles, while Mala’s chair, directly in the center, remained empty.

Tak glanced over her shoulder at him. “Go away, human, we’re working!”

“I was just trying to see if Mala and Zim were out yet,” he called.

“They’re not. What does it matter to you, anyway? Now go away!”

He shut the door again. It had been nearly two hours since Mala had walked out of the galley with Zim under her arm. What could she possibly have had to tell him that would take so long to discuss?

Sighing, he started back for his bunk…and that was when he finally heard something.

Something that he could only describe as a _wail_.

All at once, the world behind the stateroom door transformed from silence into cacophony: heavy footsteps beat out an erratic rhythm, the wail dissolved into indecipherable shouts. Before Dib could so much as turn around, the door was open again, and a hard body collided with him before barreling past.

“Zim?!” exclaimed Dib.

Yes, it was Zim, all right, but he didn’t respond, not sparing even a single mocking word for his enemy. He wasn’t completely quiet, though; he was making some kind of odd gulping sound, and his breathing was fast and harsh. He scrambled up one of the ladders set into the wall and onto the bunk directly above Dib’s, where he collapsed in a heap, facing towards the wall.

Dib inched forward disbelievingly, straining his ears. That weird noise…it was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it… “Zim, what are you doing?!”

No answer. A shudder rolled through Zim, visible even from Dib’s vantage point, but it didn’t seem to be in response to anything in particular. After a few moments had passed with no change in his condition – or the sounds he was making – Gaz turned her head with one eye open and said, “Dib, shut him up.”

“Huh?!” Dib had to fight the impulse to rear back. “Me?!”

“Just do it! Or I’ll beat you into a pulp, stick the pulp in a box, and ship it back to Earth with a note telling Dad to run it through a meat grinder.”

He gulped, shuffling his feat forward reluctantly. Something was _wrong_ with Zim, that much was clear, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see what it was. Had Mala done something besides talk to Zim? But why would she want to hurt him? He was her smeet…

Standing up on his bunk, Dib just barely managed to crane his neck far enough to see Zim’s face…and as soon as he did, he felt as though an ice-cold fist had just punched him in the gut.

“Are…are you _crying_?”

Zim’s head snapped around, revealing eyes that were brimming with moisture, cheeks that were slick with tears already shed. “W…what?” he choked out. “I—I’m—of _course_ I’m not crying! Y…you’re crying!”

“No I’m not,” replied Dib, far more disturbed than insulted.

“Sh-shut up!” Zim curled in on himself so far that his face was practically smashed against his knees, convulsions wracking his body, obviously trying – and failing – to wrangle his tears into submission.

Dib’s stomach was no longer stunned from the blow of a freezing fist; now it was twisting and squirming, radiating a gut feeling of utter _wrongness_ out to the rest of him. He wasn’t sure what it was about Zim being sad that made him so much more squeamish than Zim being, say, angry or in pain. He’d felt something similar when he went to Zim’s house right before the whole Florpus thing and saw Zim flopping around on the floor like a dying fish, loudly bemoaning the fact that his Tallest weren’t coming…in other words, seeming genuinely miserable for the first time since Dib had met him. But this was worse. Way, way worse. Zim wasn’t playing up his depression and being a drama queen – he was really, visibly _trying_ to stop acting like this, but he just couldn’t.

_So what could have been bad enough to put him in this state?_

“Come on, man…” Dib’s fingers clenched anxiously on the edge of the upper bunk. “Whatever Mala told you couldn’t have been _that_ bad.”

Zim drew in a sharp breath, sat up, and suddenly he was facing Dib, his damp face contorted with fury.

“Not that bad?! _Not that bad?!_ ” He dragged himself to the edge of the bunk, baring his teeth in Dib’s face. “OF COURSE it was that bad! They LIED to me! EVERYTHING was a LIE! _Don’t you GET IT?!_ ”

Dib met his gaze, eyes wide but otherwise showing no signs of fear. “No, Zim, I don’t get it. Who lied? _What_ was a lie?”

“THE TALLEST lied! They…they…!!” Zim’s face puckered like he was squeezing back more tears, but instead of crying, he yelled even louder. “They _weren’t coming!_ They were _NEVER_ going to come!”

“Wait…” Dib frowned. “Didn’t we already go through this?”

“Shut UP!” Zim lunged forward to swipe at Dib, missing by a mile. “We did NOT already go through this! I thought that I’d lost the respect of my Tallest, but—but—but I _never had it in the FIRST PLACE!_ They didn’t choose me for a secret mission! They didn’t want me to conquer Earth for them! _I was never even an INVADER! It was all just an act to get rid of me! They were LEADING ME ON! They wanted me to DIE ON YOUR FILTHY, MISERABLE PLANET! Get it?! GET IT?!_ ”

Beneath them, Gaz grunted with displeasure at the volume, but for once, Dib paid her no mind. Something more important was at stake.

“You mean…” His head whirled, piecing together the bits of information from Zim’s outburst. “You mean, there was no invasion? You were on Earth for nothing? I was fighting you for nothing?!”

Zim’s face screwed up, and he scooted back against the wall, keeping his face hidden from Dib.

 _Everything was a lie…I was never even an Invader!_ The words repeated endlessly in Dib’s brain, but no matter how many times he replayed them, he found them difficult to swallow. Ever since Zim had shown up in Dib’s classroom one fateful afternoon, Dib had been focused with laser-precision on studying him, learning his weaknesses, preparing for the invasion that he _knew_ had to be coming. _But there had been no invasion to prepare for_ – at least, not on Earth. Other planets weren’t so lucky. But whatever was happening on other planets didn’t change the fact that Dib Membrane, sole protector of the Earth, vigilant guardian of the human race, had devoted all of his time and energy to…nothing. The threat that had given him purpose was a sham, and it always had been.

And if _he_ felt that way about all this, then how must Zim feel?

As soon as the thought occurred to him, Dib recoiled from it – _why should I care how Zim feels_? But when he looked back at Zim, curled up and shaking against the wall, he couldn’t deny that somehow, for some reason, he _did_ care. He had the bizarre sensation that in this one strenuous circumstance, their emotions were in almost perfect sync, binding them together not as enemies, but as allies in disappointment.

Dib swallowed. “Look, Zim…” He groped for words. “This…this all sucks. This really, really sucks.”

He heard Gaz snort, and felt like kicking himself. _Wow, very eloquent, Dib_.

“But no matter why you came to Earth,” he pressed forward, trying again, “you did end up there. I mean, I get that you thought you were there to conquer it for the Irken Empire and everything, but…maybe you didn’t end up there for the Irken Empire. Maybe you ended up on Earth just for you. And being there was your chance to do…something…for yourself.”

Dib was grasping at straws here, and when Zim lifted his face to stare him down blankly, he could tell that they both knew that his attempted affirmations were a joke. ‘Your chance to do something for yourself’ _?_ Yeah, right. Zim had never done anything but attempt to conquer the planet. And why had Dib ever thought that he could make _Zim_ feel any better?

What a farce. He’d be better off just stepping away from Zim and shifting his attention to the impending annihilation of the universe. Still, he hated that the ongoing battle of Invader Zim vs. Dib Membrane had ended, not with a bang, but with a pathetic fart noise.

Zim reached over to the end of the bunk, grabbed the blanket that was folded up there, pulled it over his head, and flopped down so that he was nothing but a vaguely Irken-shaped lump on top of the mattress. Without another word, Dib retreated, dropping back into his own bunk. At least everything was quiet again, and Gaz was through with beating him up for a little while. Given the situation, that was probably the best that he could hope for.


	6. The Endless Library of Doom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could say that this chapter was so long that it took me 8 months to write, but that would be a slight exaggeration.
> 
> (it's almost 10,000 words though)

Dib had wheedled Mala for a little while, and now he was listening to a detailed explanation of Irken reproduction methods, which was actually quite interesting and had nothing to do with the birds and the bees. More like the bugs and the bacteria.

“So technically, a single Irken can have a child without any need for a partner?” he asked, wanting to clarify every detail of the impromptu lecture, his pen hovering eagerly above the page of his rapidly-filling notebook.

Mala nodded. “Technically, yes – and that was what I tried to do. But from an evolutionary standpoint, that wouldn’t have worked out for very long. Essentially, that would be cloning, with very little opportunity for any kind of mutations…and if every single member of a species has identical DNA—”

“Then it’s super easy for some virus to come along and wipe everyone out,” Dib finished for her. “I know. My dad was quizzing me on that stuff before I turned three.”

She smiled. “Of course you know, Dib. You’re a smart boy.”

They were in the bridge, surrounded by the soft pitter-patter of Kri crewmembers tapping on their respective console screens, Dib seated in an extra chair and looking raptly up at Mala. Two days had passed since he’d first stowed away…or rather, two of whatever day-night cycles that the ship was on, and he was beginning to just think of those as standard days. He was already rapidly losing touch with time on Earth.

Sometimes, he thought of his current situation as a sort of sleepaway camp – Space Camp, or Alien Camp, or Save-the-Universe Camp. After all, he had a bunk; he could use the Kri’s showers (which ran with purified water, free of the pollutants that burned Irken skin); there were even “laundry facilities,” or rather, special cleaning racks where you could hang up your clothes, press a button, and watch all of the dirt be electronically blasted away within seconds. And for each of the past two days, Dib had come seeking an education, persuading Mala into telling him all that she knew about her race and culture. It didn’t exactly take much convincing…and since Zim hadn’t emerged from under his blankets yet, there was no one to interrupt.

Right now, Dib cleared his throat and adjusted his coat collar, not used to having adults – or anyone, really – compliment him. _Smart_ was not the word that his peers usually applied to him. _Crazy_ was much more common.

“So Irkens evolved to have children in pairs, right?” he pressed, eager to get back on track.

Mala nodded and pointed to her mobile display screen. Right now it was showing a diagram of a crater filled with some kind of primordial ooze: a brew of microorganisms that Irkens had symbiotically evolved with in order to propagate their species. This reproductive bacterial stew could take a small DNA sample and mimic it to synthesize a whole new creature; in other words, if an Irken spit into one of these ooze craters, a clone of themself would be formed inside of it. But it wasn’t quite as simple as all that.

“The need for different combinations of DNA is actually how Irken genders developed,” Mala was saying. “At least, that’s what we think. Males and females carry different genetic markers, and in the earlier days of our species, these markers were particularly successful when combining into a new smeet. But once we had produced enough genetically unique individuals, the gender advantage became obsolete.” She shrugged. “So you could have two males, or two females, or two nonbinary Irkens, or any combination, and they could still produce viable children.”

That certainly explained why Irken culture placed so little emphasis on gender roles or titles. When the only difference between boys and girls was (sometimes) curled antennae or slightly more pronounced eyelashes, well, who really cared who identified as what? After all, there were things to do, places to go, planets to conquer.

Dib jotted down this revelation on his current page. “So Irkens have a pair-bonding instinct?” he asked. “Just like humans?”

“For the most part, yes. There are larger bonded groups, of course…three Irkens can produce one child, although four or more normally starts to result in twins or triplets…but we do have a base instinct to seek out a partner. A mate, you could say. Our word for it is _murkim_.”

He lowered his pad slightly. “But you guys don’t do that anymore, right? There’s no more love. You’ve put a stop to families, so…”

Mala pulled the constipated face that, he noticed, she often made when trying to explain a concept that had no human equivalent. “I mean…sort of? We can’t reproduce naturally anymore. The planet’s too polluted, the microorganisms have all died off, and our artificial recreations of those microorganisms just result in smeets with horrible birth defects that die immediately. We’ve resorted to test-tube babies, so there’s no practical reason for us to want partners anymore. But…some instincts are hard to kill off, despite the Control Brains’ best efforts, so now we’re in almost a compromise state. Nobody has families, and ‘love’ is a dirty word, but lots of Irkens still have murkims.”

On the other side of the bridge, Gir – who was playing some version of tag with Minimoose that involved a lot of bonking heads and jumping up and down – chirped out, “Hey, that rhymes!”

Dib glanced over, then looked back at Mala, his brow furrowed. “But…if love is forbidden, then…how is that possible?”

She reached up and rolled the bead on her antenna between her fingers. “Essentially, you can have a partner as long as you don’t go referring to them with that nasty _love_ word. Most of us are so well-bred and well-conditioned that we’d never even dream of saying that we love somebody – the thought would never even cross our minds. The Control Brains have essentially abolished the word, but not the actual emotion. Murkim pairs are still very common.”

“I’ve never seen paired-off Irkens,” he said skeptically.

“Oh yes you have. The previous two Tallests, Red and Purple? They were a couple.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. It wasn’t even a secret. Everybody knew – but again, as long as they weren’t saying that they _loved_ each other, just that they were murkims, it was no big deal.”

Dib opened his mouth to reply, but at just that moment, a soft alert began to chime from Tee’s console, and Mala hurried over to see what was going on.

He took the opportunity to review his notes. Irkens reproducing with bacteria…the divergence and re-convergence of the genders…but the thing that fascinated him most, the bullet points that he kept running his eyes over, were the parts about pair-bonding and mates. Something about it felt a little… _off_ to him, although he couldn’t place why. Maybe it was because of the niggling memory of those embarrassing comments that Skoodge had made a couple of days ago.

“Oh, good!” exclaimed Mala’s voice loudly, and he looked up. “Excellent! Now we can finally get to work.”

The bridge’s main screen, which had been displaying an endless, rather monotonous starfield, switched to a zoomed-in view of a single planet. It was quite dark, not a single light shining on its surface, but he could just barely make out the faint suggestions of artificial lines crossing the terrain – straight and turning in rigid right angles, chasing each other in endless squares, like a maze in one of those puzzle books for kids.

Mala strode out in front of the screen, nodding approvingly. “Planet Libraria!” she declared. “We should be coming in for a landing in just a few minutes.”

Planet Libraria? Well, Dib didn’t need three guesses to figure out what kind of place this was, but he still had questions. “So, why are we here?” he asked.

Tak, sitting at the console nearest to him, gave him a glare that might have intimidated him if he hadn’t grown up getting much more toxic looks from Gaz. “ _We_ are here to complete the first phase of our mission. _You_ are here because you stowed away, and you will not be joining us on said mission.”

“Now, Tak, there’s no need to be rude,” Mala chided gently. “Yes, you’re right that Dib will be staying here, but that doesn’t mean that we have to keep him in the dark about everything.” She turned to face him. “We’re here to gather some information that we’ll need in order to proceed with our plans to reform Irk.”

“Oh,” said Dib. “This is just a research trip, then?”

“More of a scavenger hunt.” She turned back, scrutinizing the planet on the screen as they slowly drew nearer to it. “I need to show the Irken people all of the ways that the Control Brains…well… _control_ us. It’s hard to swallow without proof, and all I can offer them is my word, just hearsay about everything I’ve been through. But Libraria is where all Irken knowledge and records have been stored for generations. This isn’t just the edited version of history that’s passed down from PAK to PAK; hidden somewhere in this place is the nasty, nefarious, uncensored truth. After all, nobody can create a tyrannical evil empire without some kind of plan.”

“I guess not,” he said. “But did they really just leave that information open and unguarded on some library planet, where anybody can just walk right in?”

“Of course not. We’re disabling the defense systems and hacking into the card catalogue. Blis is at work on that as we speak.”

He craned his neck to look at Blis, who was indeed tapping away at her console, although with no view of her screen, he couldn’t tell if she was slinking through the code of Libraria’s computers or just scrolling through self-deprecating memes. He cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me, Mala? No offense, but…well, I saw Blis’s work on your ship’s firewall, and it was good and all, but in the end I still got through it. Maybe I could help hack into the card catalogue? I have a lot of experience with—”

Mala shook her head emphatically. “No, no, no. You human children are _not_ getting involved in this. I still have to return you to – to Earth – in one piece.”

Dib snapped his mouth shut, disgruntled. Here he was, traveling through space, finally given the opportunity to visit other worlds, and yet he couldn’t even set foot off of this ship without everyone harping on how he was just a kid. And honestly, it was getting a little stifling in here. He never would have thought that a spaceship could be _boring_ , but there wasn’t much to see around here, and he’d been everywhere except in Mala’s private quarters.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Mala. “Why don’t you do me a favor and go try to shake Zim out of bed? Perhaps he’ll be interested that we’re beginning our mission.”

And just like that, he suddenly wanted to escape even more than he had before. “Huh?! Why?!”

“Because he likes to be included,” she answered simply. “An invitation to help us with our scavenger hunt might be just what he needs right now.”

“But why _me_?!”

Tak butted in without taking her eyes off of her console. “Because we have important work to do and you’re bothering us while we try to land this thing, which is no easy task. So bug off and at least make yourself _semi_ -useful for once.”

Of course Mala immediately stepped in to admonish her First Officer, but Dib grumbled, “I get the picture,” and trudged out of the room. He didn’t really want to hang around if the girls were going to start ragging on him, anyway.

The stateroom wasn’t empty – Gaz was on her bunk, unobtrusively playing with her GS4 and generally being a model stowaway. Next to her bed was Dib’s, and above that was an overdramatic lump hiding from the light of day. Dib reached up, grabbed a corner of the blanket, and whipped it down in one quick movement.

Zim sat up, blinking and dazed, as if the dim lights of the stateroom had dazzled his eyes. “Who dares to disrupt the misery cocoon of Zim?!”

“I do,” said Dib, unimpressed. “Only I’m just the messenger. We’re landing on a planet and Mala wants your help.”

Zim uttered a sigh so deep, lengthy, and sorrowful that a professional soap opera actor might have envied it. He flopped back down, not even purposefully, more like he was just letting gravity take its course. “No she doesn’t. Shouldn’t she know by now? I’m _useless_! I am fit only for the sham missions bestowed upon me by the Tallest, and nothing more…!”

“Yes, the Tallest lied to you, we all know by now,” Dib said dismissively, having already moved past this revelation and transitioned into his new mission of trying to save the universe…or rather, trying to _try_ to save the universe. “But you can’t mope around in here forever!”

“Watch me.” Zim grabbed an end of the blanket and tried to yank it up again, but Dib pulled it back down.

“Look, man,” he said firmly. “I get it, this whole thing sucks, but it’s not the end of the world! It’s not even the end of your life! I mean, this is like – you’re free now, you can choose to do whatever you want! Haven’t you realized that this might be your shot at redemption? You don’t have to be bad anymore…!”

Zim lifted up his head, blinking. “…huh…perhaps you’re right, you filthy human pig-smelly!”

Dib’s heart lifted a little, propelled on a geyser of incredulous triumph. “Really?! You’re actually going to turn over a new leaf?!”

“Yeah!” And with that single word, Zim sprang up, standing on top of his bunk with his feet spread wide and his hands on his hips. “I don’t have to be limited by what the Tallest did to me!”

“Right! That’s exactly right!”

“After all, there’s a new Tallest now! I bet he’ll be even better than the old ones! And when I go introduce myself to him, surely he will see how incredible I am, and he will declare me to be a proper Invader at last! My dignity will be restored!”

The geyser faltered and choked off. Dib’s hopes, which had gotten as high as ever in spite of all the disappointment he’d faced over the course of his short life, came crashing back down to Earth. “What? Uh, no, that’s not what I meant by—”

“I must be in top form when I meet him at last! Whatever Mameen wants will be a good training exercise for me!” Zim hopped down from the bed. “I truly know how to make the best out of a bad situation! I’m BRILLIANT!”

“But redemption—?” Dib tried weakly.

Zim looked him in the face. “Yes, exactly! I will redeem myself in the eyes of the Irken Empire!” And he went marching enthusiastically out of the room, into the bridge, eager to join a mission that he’d had no interest in five minutes ago.

Dib slumped face-first against the wall, allowing his forehead to land against the cool metal with a smacking sound. “What did you expect?” he heard Gaz say from her bed. “Nothing’s ever been able to convince Zim that he’s not a great Invader. Not for long, anyway.”

“He’s hopeless,” muttered Dib. “I’m stupid for even trying.”

“You sure are,” agreed Gaz, never looking up.

After a few more seconds, Dib gathered his motivation again. The Kri Society was about to begin the first stage of their universe-saving mission, but now a disloyal member was in their midst — a disloyal member who Mala had specifically asked for. If they wouldn’t let him do anything substantial to help, he could at least warn them.

As he hurried out into the bridge, the ship begin to rattle, then thumped down in what was obviously landing. He went sprawling, hands shooting out for a nearby chair, which spun out of reach and ran into Skoodge, who tumbled backwards and knocked someone else over, and the someone else landed on Dib…and after several seconds of dazedly trying to figure out what had happened, Dib realized that the someone else was Zim. He blushed from his cheeks to the tips of his ears.

“Get _off_ me!” he shouted through gritted teeth, shoving at the Irken draped across him.

Zim began to sit up…and promptly jerked away, springing off of Dib at an odd angle and landing on his butt half a second later. “ _You_ get out from _under_ me!” he yelled back.

“I think I liked you better when you were in your cocoon of misery!” Dib shot back, already missing the two days of reprieve now behind him. Jeez, why had he wanted to make Zim feel better, again?

Outraged, Zim opened his mouth to respond, only for Mala’s voice to cut in from across the room: “That’s enough, boys. Nice to see you’ve gotten your energy back, Zim — now, are you ready for the mission?”

Zim righted himself, marching towards the front of the bridge with his annoying little pseudo-military walk, abruptly behaving as if Dib did not exist. Petty arguments with humans? He’d never dream of engaging in such a demeaning activity. “I am _always_ ready for the mission, Mameen,” he declared smugly. “And by the way, when we meet the new Tallest, perhaps you could mention that to him? I’m sure he would be very interested to know how prepared and obedient I am!”

Mala turned to Zim with a slightly perturbed expression. “Zim, when we meet him it will be to _overthrow_ him, not to give him your performance review.”

“Yes, yes,” said Zim dismissively, as if her correction was just so much irrelevant noise. “Now, let us proceed to the mission!”

With the landing completed, the girls had all gotten up from their stations, gathering whatever they thought they would need for the excursion. Their appearances ranged from prepared (Tak) to anxious (Tenn) to bored (Blis). There were still no SIR units present, though — except for Gir, who had excitedly rejoined Zim along with Minimoose.

“All right,” Mala said, and now her tone of voice was different. She was no longer friendly-Mala or motherly-Mala, Dib thought; now she was business-Mala. _Leader-_ Mala. “Blis has penetrated the card catalogue’s security, so we know our destination. I’ve also had Tee chart the easiest path to the information we need, and Tenn’s given me a report on any secondary devices that may not have been disabled along with the main system, so that we can avoid being caught out by anything unexpected. I have to reiterate that it’s very important not to touch _anything_ — not even the walls — unless I specifically mention that it is okay to touch it. And don’t stray from the path, either. Keep behind me at all times, and don’t break formation. Are there any questions?”

Zim raised his hand.

“Yes, Zim, the rules apply to you as well,” said Mala.

Zim lowered his hand.

“I want Skoodge directly behind me,” she continued. “Tak, you bring up the rear — I need a strong arm looking out behind us. Tenn, you’ll be in front of her; Blis and Tee, behind Skoodge. And Zim, I want you right in the middle.”

“But Mameen!” he whined. “The middle is for _weak_ soldiers!”

“In this case, it’s for soldiers who really need to be supervised.” Mala straightened the hem of her uniform, looked around the ship, and nodded as her eyes landed on Dib. “Dib, you and your sister can keep an eye on the ship for me, all right?”

“I guess,” said Dib uncertainly. “But, Mala—“

“No buts!” she interrupted. “Trust me, the less people I have to supervise out there, the better.” And with that, she placed her hand deliberately on her console screen.

For one moment, the entire ship seemed to groan; then a small section of the floor fell away, forming the hatch that had ushered Zim inside back on Earth, about a schmillion light years ago. Only this time, the view outside was not of a forest clearing, but rather what appeared to be the flat roof of a dark, planet-sized building. Wisps of dank, chilly air curled into the Kri ship, the antithesis of the Earth summer that they’d left so very far behind them.

“Formation, now,” ordered Mala.

She dropped through the hatch onto the roof, and the members of the Kri society followed her in exactly the order that she’d described. Zim, right behind Tee, was not the last to go, but he was the last that Dib paid attention to as he shot a sneer towards his Earthly nemesis before slipping out of sight.

 _Here we go again,_ thought Dib. The whole universe was at stake, yet Zim was still coming down firmly on the side of the people who wanted to destroy it, even turning his metaphorical nose up at his own surrogate mother. Perhaps the battle of Dib Membrane vs. Invader Zim hadn’t ended so much as changed character. He told himself that this fact was a nuisance, rather than something that he was secretly happy about.

The floor hatch started to close automatically — and just before it completely sealed, Dib darted forward and stuffed his notepad into the crack between door and floor. The thickness of the pages was just enough to keep the hatch jammed open.

“Let me guess,” said a voice behind him. “You’re about to do exactly what Mala specifically told you not to do.”

He whirled around, and of course, there was Gaz, her GS4 clenched in one fist. Her eyes were barely open beneath her bangs, and she was not exactly looking at him with a modicum of admiration.

“How’d you know what I was doing?” he asked suspiciously.

Gaz blinked sedately. “My stupid senses were tingling. And you did the exact same thing a few days ago. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I’ll rip your brain out through your ears and choke you with it.”

“I _have_ to follow them,” he insisted, folding his arms stubbornly. “Zim just flat-out declared that he’s still loyal to the Irken Empire, and Mala doesn’t even care! I thought that she was smarter, but…I guess that all grown-ups have to be kind of dumb.” He shook his head regretfully. “As usual, I’m the only one taking Zim seriously, so it’s up to me to make sure that he doesn’t ruin everything!”

“You have your head so far up your butt that you should be able to see out through your mouth,” responded Gaz. “Everybody in the Kri Society can handle Zim way better than you can. Following him is a stupid idea.”

“I’m not asking you to come with me,” said Dib, kicking the hatch. It began to open again, and he quickly bent down to grab his notepad before it could fall.

Gaz shuffled up beside him. “I’m going anyway. If I return you to Dad dead, then I want to at least be able to say that I’m the one who killed you.”

Dib thought of complaining, but decided that it would be easier to tail the Kri members with all of his limbs intact. So he ran down the hatch, begging his feet to be swift and silent, his coat billowing out all around him in the chilly air.

* * *

Dib had frequented many a library in his twelve years of life, and he tended to think of them as cozy, well-loved, and above all _occupied_ places. Sure, they did most of their business now through terminals where their patrons could download digital books, but even the areas full of archaic books-on-paper were frequented by a steady population of diehards. On Earth, even the library of his aggressively anti-intellectual hometown was never empty during business hours.

The planet Libraria, on the other hand, didn’t even seem to _have_ business hours.

After lowering themselves inside through a ceiling panel that the Kri Society must have left open on their way in, Dib found himself in a dark, forbidding network of tunnels that might have more accurately been referred to as a “word dungeon.” Narrow hallways marched up and back along themselves again, a way of cramming the maximum amount of storage space into the planet-spanning building, and to take full advantage of that space, there wasn’t a single wall that wasn’t lined with utilitarian iron bookshelves. When his curiosity got the better of him and he drifted close to one of these shelves, he found that the objects crammed into them weren’t books, but rather seemed to be book-sized plastic casings that held storage disks. Perhaps this was a more resilient way of storing your civilization’s knowledge, less prone to literally rotting away, especially when nobody seemed to care about the library’s upkeep.

He leaned towards one of the casings, squinting at the letters stamped on its spine. As far as he could tell, the label didn’t appear to be in any alphabet he recognized. He started to rub away the dust for a closer look.

Gaz slapped his hand away. “Quit it, stupid,” she hissed. “Mala said not to touch anything, remember? This place is probably full of booby traps.”

After a reluctant moment, Dib nodded, stepping away from the casing. After all, he was just here to keep an eye on Zim and make sure that the Kri’s reconnoissance mission went smoothly, and setting off a booby trap would be the opposite of the stealth that he aimed to achieve.

Dim emergency lights in cage-like covers studded the ceiling, but he could still hardly see, and there was no way of knowing which of the highly uniform paths the Kri Society might have taken. Then Gaz whipped out her phone, switched on the flashlight, and directed the little beam of white light at the floor. Suddenly, foot-tracks through the dust revealed a winding trail, and he followed it eagerly without even thinking to thank his sister.

Not too long after that, he heard feet shuffling and occasional muffled voices. Dib slowed his pace a little, not wanting to slip into anyone’s line of sight. Finally, he turned a corner and there they were: Mala furthest away from him, towering above the group, with everyone else bobbing along behind her like links in a chain.

Mala must have paused to choose the next direction, because the group stopped. Dib stopped, too, hunkering down behind a bookcase for cover.

“I can’t see Zim,” he hissed to himself, frustrated. After all, the whole point of all this sneaking around was to watch Zim!

“He’s in the middle,” muttered Gaz. “Probably not doing anything evil. Happy now? Come on, let’s turn around before we get too far away from the ship.”

“No way!” The group up ahead was moving on again; Dib glanced around quickly at the confusing array of hallways, looking for some kind of path that would give him a better view. Finally, without a better option, he gripped the bookshelf that he was clinging to and began to scale it.

Gaz turned to him, her eyes opening at a slow, dangerous pace. “What are you doing now, moron?!”

“Getting a better look.” The shelf was easy to climb, its iron beams constructed in an almost perfect ladder-shape.

“You’re going to get yourself caught and get everyone killed!”

“No I’m not!” Focusing with single-minded determination on a shape that he could barely see, but that he knew by height and stature _must_ be Zim, he abandoned the argument and crawled swiftly along the tops of the bookshelf, easily bridging the gap to the next one and continuing along his way.

Now he was gaining on the Kri Society, barely pausing for a moment when the shelves shivered beneath him. He wasn’t heavy enough to tip anything over, and even the slaps of his hands against the metal were drowned out by voices…

“That way goes to the center,” said somebody (probably Tee, he thought).

“Then we should go the other way,” came Mala’s voice. “The Empire would never store important information in such an obvious place. They’d tuck it in a corner and make sure that everyone forgot about it.”

“That’s what they _say_ ,” interjected Tak. “But wouldn’t a corner be relatively obvious, as well? Better to just stick it on some random shelf somewhere. In a place like this, who’d be able to find it?”

Mala snorted. “You’re giving them a bit too much credit, dear. Hardly anybody puts that much thought into things like this.”

“Oh?” said Tak. “What about the Control Brains?”

Dib was pretty much right on top of them now, hunkering down atop a shelf and keeping his eyes glued to Zim. The would-be Invader was sticking to his spot in the middle of the group, looking bored and restless. Surely any minute now, he’d be breaking away on his own to—

Dib’s palm squeaked softly against the metal shelf, and Blis’s antennae bristled, her head snapping directly towards his hiding place. He choked on a breath. _How could she possibly hear that?!_

“Sir!” barked Blis, her mouth crinkling distastefully.

Several things suddenly happened at once. First, Dib tried to scramble out of sight, only to lose his balance and tumble from his narrow perch into the midst of the Kri Society. The Irkens scattered as he hit the floor; Mala cried out with dismay, “Dib?!” and Zim yelled, “The DIB! Of course!” And then — maybe because of Dib’s fall, maybe because he’d bumped or jostled something on the way down — a series of rapid beeps trilled from the direction of the shelf he’d toppled from.

“Oh, no,” said Tenn in a faint, anxious voice.

Weapons had barely bristled from the PAKs of every Irken present when the barriers began to rise from the floor.

It was like a crop of glass walls growing in fast-motion. Everyone, including Dib, scrabbled to and fro, terrified of being pinned to the ceiling and then sliced in half by one of the new walls. Zim’s foot caught on one of the edges, and he was dragged up a few inches before shrieking and pushing himself free; he landed beside Dib, who had pushed himself up against one of the bookshelves, hoping he’d be safer there. A moment later, Gir jetted himself over to join Zim, smiling in blissful ignorance of the situation.

In less than thirty seconds, the new walls had joined up with the ceiling, forming crooked spaces and pathways that hadn’t been there before and almost certainly wouldn’t be on any map that anyone had access to. Kri members stared at each other’s faces through the transparent material — which, before Dib’s eyes, suddenly frosted over and went opaque. A moment later, the spot he’d been staring at showed him nothing but his own reflection.

“Is everyone okay?” shouted a muffled voice that he barely recognized as Mala’s. Apparently the new walls dampened sound, but didn’t block it completely; a chorus of mutters and groans responded to her question.

“What happened, sir?” asked Tenn from somewhere to Dib’s right.

“This is why I didn’t want you to touch anything,” said Mala, sighing. “Apparently, Dib set off some sort of defense system. We got all the guns and explosive devices in the primary and secondary systems, but this is…something different.”

“A maze,” Dib realized aloud. He remembered how much this planet had looked like a puzzle book from the air, and wondered if that might have been intentional after all.

“I’d call it more of a labyrinth,” grunted Tak. “I guess they figured that would be entertaining to watch Irk’s enemies wander around in an endless library until they died from hunger and thirst and exhaustion. Sadistic if inefficient.”

“Why don’t we just break through the walls?” suggested Skoodge. “They don’t look very thick.”

Dib heard a few soft clicks, perhaps of PAK legs unfolding and assembling, followed by the sizzle of some kind of energy projectile being fired…and then a yelp and the sound of a heavy body thunking against the ground.

“Skoodge!” Mala cried.

“I’m okay, Mameen!”

“The walls must be shielded,” remarked Tak. “I’d guess that images aren’t the only thing that they reflect.”

“Right. Nobody touch the walls,” instructed Mala. “Especially with anything that could be considered a weapon.”

Dib had been afraid to speak, not wanting to bring Mala’s wrath down upon him or draw much attention to himself at all, since he was apparently the one who’d triggered the maze…but now he couldn’t help asking a question. “So…what do we do?”

Mala sighed heavily from behind the two or three walls that separated them. “Well…even if there’s no proper way out of this maze, if we keep going, eventually we’ll have to come back to the roof panel that we came in through. So we’ve just got to keep walking and make our way there. Whoever gets out first can go back to the ship and work on disabling the tertiary defense system. We’re all split up, but…is anybody by themselves?”

“I’m here with Tenn,” Skoodge piped up.

“I’m with Blis,” said Tee.

“Ew,” added Blis.

“And Tak’s here with me,” Mala said. “Zim, what about you?”

Beside Dib, Zim opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, caught in a rare moment of being angered beyond words. Finally, he burst out, “I’m with the miserable slithering human meat-sack who RUINED EVERYTHING! …oh, and Gir.”

“Hi Mameen!” exclaimed Gir.

“Right. Everyone has at least one partner, and you need to stick with them,” Mala commanded. “Safety in numbers. We’d better get moving. I’ll see you all back at the ship soon.”

Dib and Zim pivoted their heads to stare at each other simultaneously, and Dib could see his own suspicion and dismay mirrored in Zim’s face. What was worse than being stuck in a labyrinth within an endless library? Being stuck in said labyrinth with your worst enemy…and having to place trust in them, even a _small_ amount of trust, if you ever wanted to find your way back out again.

* * *

It took eighty seconds for Zim to grab Gir and try running off ahead of Dib, and ninety seconds for the two of them to start bickering.

“Hey!” Dib put on a surge of speed, managing to overtake Zim. He stood in the narrow mirrored hallway with his arms outstretched, blocking the Irken’s path. “What part of stick together do you not understand?!”

“The part where it involves me sticking together with _you_!” Zim shot back. “Especially when this is _all your fault_! If you hadn’t been SNOOPING…!”

“It wasn’t snooping! I knew you’d tried to disobey Mala somehow — just like you’re doing right now—“

“Oh, so now you’re sucking up to my mameen?!”

“She’s trying to save the universe! And she doesn’t need YOU going behind her back, deserting her for the Tallest—“

“I would NEVER go behind her back!” bellowed Zim. “You know NOTHING of me or Mameen, Earth-stink!” His PAK legs emerged, two rapidly hoisting him up, another two slithering menacingly towards Dib…until the edge of one brushed a wall, and Zim yelped as a nasty electric shock rattled his slight frame.

“Owie!” said Gir, blinking.

“Don’t touch the walls,” said Dib smugly, standing over a dazed and slightly static-charged Zim.

He set off at a brisk pace, relishing the few seconds that he got to spend on his own, but it wasn’t to last. Zim very quickly propelled himself into the lead again, swinging down a random turn-off from the path they were currently on.

Dib stopped. “I don’t think we should go that way.”

“Well, Zim thinks we should go this way!” declared the king of third-person indignantly. “Come on, Gir!”

“That’s a right turn,” insisted Dib. “The best way to get through a maze is to keep making left-hand turns.”

“Oh, so you’re some kind of maze expert?”

“No, but everybody knows that.”

“Your knowledge of Earth-mazes is not applicable here!” shouted Zim, spinning around and jabbing one pointed finger into Dib’s chest. “Zim is the Irken expert! You know NOTHING!”

Dib slapped his hand away, one corner of his mouth pulling down into a scowl.

Then Zim stiffened, his antennae trembling, and turned to see Gir skipping down the left-hand path. Uttering a couple of foul words — in a language other than English, but it was easy to identify curses, even when you couldn’t understand them — he took off after his robot, leaving Dib to trot at his heels.

They might have gone as long as forty seconds before getting into it again, and this time, it was Dib who poked the smoldering fire back to life. “Don’t tell me that I know nothing,” he said, glowering. “I know plenty!”

“You know nothing of Zim or of Irk, and that’s what counts,” replied Zim haughtily, without even bothering to turn around.

Dib quickened his step until the two of them were shoulder-to-shoulder. “You think that after a year and a half of stopping you from taking over the Earth, I know nothing?!” he demanded. “I’ve sucked info out of Tak’s ship and your base! I’ve done more research than you’ll ever know! I — I was _prepared!_ ”

“You were _prepared_ ,” mimicked Zim in a nasally tone of voice, before narrowing his eyes. “You’re still a human, putrid Dib-thing. A rotting bundle of meat enveloped in even more meat. A creature with your pitiful excuse for sentient awareness could never be remotely _prepared_ for an Irken!”

“I’ve been stargazing with my dad since before I turned two!” protested Dib. “My first word was _alien_! And even before that — did you know that when I was a baby, I was abducted by aliens?! I think that they were trying to create some sort of genius super-baby, and—“

If Zim had rolled his eyes any harder, then he probably would have popped his ocular implants (which Dib _knew_ that he had, thank you very much) right out of his face. “If _you’re_ the best that they could do, then they were almost as pitiful as you humans!”

Something bubbled up from Dib’s gut and overtook his heart. It would be inaccurate to say that he’d never felt such an intense rage before — he wouldn’t even say that it was the angriest he’d ever been, not after all of the indignities he’d suffered at Zim’s hands — but this time there was a trace of deeply personal hurt in the emotional brew that made him exceptionally testy. Dib Membrane had not helped to save the city from a giant hamster, put the Earth’s molten core back where it belonged, and teleported the planet away from a deadly Florpus hole just to hear the alien scum he’d been fighting against dismiss him as an insignificant opponent.

“Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get ready for something like you?! Or how much I gave up?!” Age-old hurt chose the words spewing out of his mouth, coating them like poison over bullets. “Way before you ever showed up, I was watching the skies, monitoring transmissions…! And all the _books_ I read! And all those _equations_ I came up with to prove to my dad that it was almost a mathematical certainty that alien life existed…not that he ever listened to that, or to _anything_ that I had to say! I didn’t even have anybody to talk to you, you know?! Except for Gaz, I guess…she listened sometimes. But no _friends_. And you know, maybe I could have had friends, if I gave up all my studies, but I didn’t! Because I decided that _this_ was more important! Even if I was doing it alone, and even if sometimes I really _did_ feel like I was crazy, it was _still_ more important, because the fate of all mankind was at stake! The fate of the entire _world!_ And I’ve kept that whole stupid world that doesn’t listen to me and doesn’t care about me safe, and now you — you’re going to tell me that I know _nothing!_ You’re even more of a sicko than I thought, you simpering space-lizard!”

Dib finished his rant, panting, not really thinking about the amount of personal information he’d just regurgitated; it was hardly the first time that he’d spilled his dilemmas out to someone who couldn’t care less. After a moment of pause, Zim came to a stop…then began to applaud sarcastically.

“Ooh, what a sad story,” he mocked, his teeth flashing in a sneer. “The life of a human must be so _hard_. Your daddy didn’t believe you, boo-hoo-hoo.” The sardonic tone dripped out of his voice, exposing the plain old anger behind it. “You wouldn’t have lasted one day growing up as an Irken! Try having your butt whipped by a laser, or getting put into a slapping machine when the creche-carer decides to punish you! And just in case you didn’t get it, _I_ didn’t have a dad to make it all better every time I got a little _boo-boo!_ ”

“Neither did I,” Dib retorted through gritted teeth. “My dad built a robot nurse to take care of stuff like that.”

“Oh, a _robot nurse,_ how _awful_.” Zim’s sneer had become a grimace. “But you still _had_ a dad.”

“And you had a mom,” Dib couldn’t help pointing out.

A flicker of confusion came and went on Zim’s face. When it had passed, though, the grimace morphed into a half-feral rictus of fury. Dib had evidently touched a raw nerve.

“ _Barely!_ ” spat Zim, his fists balling up at his sides. “I don’t think the puny brain rattling around in your huge head has grasped the fact that she _died!_ Or I thought she died — she might as well have died! And you will NEVER understand what it’s like to be a year-six smeet, waiting for your mameen to come back from a mission, and instead having to hear that she’s _NEVER COMING BACK!_ Not to mention, being PUNISHED for being sad about it! I wasn’t allowed to be sad that the only person who was EVER nice to me was just _gone_ , and — and — sometimes I was even angry at _her_! Mameen would have been okay if she hadn’t kept LEAVING me…but there’s no way you could _ever_ understand THAT…!”

Dib’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You think I can’t understand being mad at your parent for constantly leaving?”

Zim’s mouth snapped shut, and the air itself seemed to quiver with the abruptness of the change. The two boys were looking right at each other, and Dib found himself uncomfortably reminded of the moment of solidarity between them in the forest back on Earth, a few days ago now. Now the feeling was even stronger and even stranger; they’d somehow stumbled into mutual understanding by raging at each other.

The tension in Dib’s muscles uncoiled, leaving his shoulders to loosen and slump. Somehow, he was no longer angry.

“I really have no idea why I’m even telling you this,” grumbled Zim, his antennae flattening. As soon as he’d averted his gaze, the spell between them seemed to be broken. They fell into step beside one another, plunging deeper into the labyrinth, looking anywhere but at each other.

Dib couldn’t help noticing, though, that Zim seemed to have taken the advice about making left-hand turns.

Left and left and left and left, and Dib knew that he ought to drop the matter entirely, but the ringing silence of Libraria agitated him more than the arguing had done. “If Mala is so important to you, then why don’t you want to help her?” he asked pointedly. “Why undermine her in favor of the new Tallest, who you don’t even know?”

Zim snorted. “I’m not _undermining_ her! The idea that Zim would do such a thing is merely the product of your pitifully demented imagination!”

“But you said that you wanted to impress the new Tallest and redeem yourself in the eyes of the Irken Empire.”

“Why do you tell me things that I already know?”

“Because Mala wants to _overthrow_ the Empire! Did you miss the part where she told you that the Control Brains shot her down and had her imprisoned?! You know, the whole reason why you thought she was dead?!”

Zim’s feet dragged for a moment, as though they’d suddenly become much heavier, and his eyes seemed almost to glaze over in the dirty yellow light. “It’s a mistake,” he muttered, and then he repeated, louder, “It’s a mistake. It must be. Just some little misunderstanding! Trust me, when we meet the Tallest, we can explain everything to him, and it will get sorted out. Maybe he’ll even make Mameen his successor, like she was to Miyuki in the old days! But until then, I will use all of my spectacular talents and wonderful brain-meats to help her meet him — which would be MUCH easier without you RUINING EVERYTHING, putrid flesh-sack!”

Dib’s brow creased. He didn’t even rise to the barb about ruining everything; he was too preoccupied with the distant expression that had been on Zim’s face when he was dismissing Mala’s experiences as a “misunderstanding.” It was like he’d zoned out, deliberately missing Dib’s point…only for his full faculties to suddenly return once it was time to insult his nemesis.

“Okay,” Dib finally said. “Against my better instincts, I’m gonna believe you on this one. You don’t want to hurt Mala.”

“Of course not,” replied Zim derisively. “Only a fool as foolish as the dull-witted Gasquiggasplorch would take this long to figure that out!”

“And I don’t want to hurt her, either—“

“That’s funny, because you’re doing a good job of it so far!”

“—so can we maybe make some kind of agreement here?” Dib finished, exasperated, Zim’s latest quip almost making him want to call the whole thing off. “A formal decision to not go after each other while this whole…Kri thing is going on? A truce, I guess?”

Zim halted in his tracks, propping his hands on his hips. Gir kept walking, smacking into his master’s leg and bouncing backwards with a squeak…before mimicking the haughty, unabashed pose.

“You are not a good keeper of truces, human-Dib,” mused Zim. “Recall our trip into your filthy head and how you left Zim to rot!”

“I mean, we didn’t exactly have an _agreement_ that time,” Dib said. “But this time we will. I promise!” He held up his right hand. “I swear on my father’s grave!”

Zim’s eyebrow arched into an exaggerated curve. “What about your mother’s grave?!”

“Uh, well, I’ve never had a mother, so it would be kind of hard for me to swear on her grave,” admitted Dib. “But I swear on _your_ mother’s grave. How’s that?”

The Irken puckered his lips, turning his entire face into a grotesquely comical caricature of suspicion. “No crossed fingers?” he demanded.

Dib waggled all of his decidedly un-crossed fingers in front of his face. “And no crossed toes, either.”

Zim twisted his mouth back and forth, visibly weighing the pros and cons of the agreement. After a long and deeply dramatic pause, he proclaimed, “If you go back on your word, then I’m going to pulverize your brain into…little…paste-smears!”

“And if you go back on yours, I’ll get you on my autopsy table the second we’re back on Earth,” agreed Dib.

“Oh, you mean that thing that you could have done at any time over the past few weeks, but were too weak to act on?”

Much to his dismay, Dib felt a familiar blush overtake his face. “Y-yeah, well, you could have tried to make me into…paste-smears…if you really wanted to, but you didn’t!”

Zim’s face blanched ever so slightly, and he whirled around, marching towards the next left turn and leaving Gir to stumble after him.

Deciding that the exchange of threats was the closest that they were going to come to a binding truce, Dib picked up the pace, keeping at Zim’s heels. He’d been planning to shake on it, but on second thought, it was probably for the better that they didn’t do that. After all, the more time he spent avoiding — ugh — _touching Zim’s hand_ , the better.

* * *

Fifty-eight minutes later, Dib was beginning to wonder if this library really _was_ endless. At least, his phone claimed that it had been less than an hour, but to him, it felt more like fifty-eight years. His feet were beginning to cramp within his sneakers, and with no arguments and no conversation (what would he have talked to Zim about when they weren’t fighting, anyway?) there was nothing to fill up the yawning chasm of time before them…except for Gir sporadically bursting into song or blurting out some non-sequitor, before lapsing back into silence just as quickly.

As they came to the seventy millionth split in the path, Zim paused and glanced around, his reflection flickering in the mirrors to either side of him. “I thought you said that making left turns would get us out of here,” he grumbled.

“Well, when you solve a maze that way, you might end up having to walk through the whole thing…” Dib groaned. “And in this case, the maze is the size of a planet.”

“Okay, we did it your way. Now we’re doing it my way!” And Zim extended a twisted-looking contraption from his PAK, which began to flash patterns of red laser light on the ceiling.

Dib trudged to his side, arms folded. “And your way is what, exactly?”

“I’m looking for an escape hatch in the roof, like the one we came in from.” The starry red flashes on the ceiling drew Dib’s eyes as Zim continued to scan for an exit. It was a pretty light show…but Dib could think of at least one problem with this plan.

“How are we gonna get up there? These walls are, like, twenty feet high and slick and…” Dib recalled the gruesome sizzle of Skoodge’s rebounded blast from earlier. “And we can’t touch them.”

“As part of our new partnership—“ Zim began.

“Please don’t call it that.”

“WHATEVER! We made a truce and now you’re going to help me by drawing fire while I open up an escape hatch!”

Dib took a generous step back from Zim. “Draw fire—?! Uh, no, I don’t think so!”

“It’ll be fine,” Zim scoffed. “You can just shoot anything that tries to shoot at me!”

“With _what_? I don’t have any weapons!”

No sooner were the words out of Dib’s mouth than Gir was unceremoniously flung in his direction, thumping against his chest with enough force to send him skidding against the nearest wall. Dib yelped and jerked away as the beginnings of an electric shock buzzed on his skin, and Gir giggled. “That hurty-tickles!”

“Just point Gir at anything that aims at me,” said Zim, still scouting for an opening. “He’s smart enough to know what to do!”

Dib watched Gir, who was stretching his arm out to try and be “hurty-tickled” by the wall again, and somehow doubted that.

“Aha!” The red lights dancing from Zim’s PAK suddenly flickered and turned to green. Although the ceiling looked the same as ever to Dib, apparently there was a panel up there…which he dearly hoped was true, or else he was about to risk his life for the privilege of seeing Zim smash his head on the roof. (Which, okay, would be pretty funny, but wouldn’t exactly help them out of their current predicament.)

All four of Zim’s PAK legs clacked against the ground, and Zim bounced up and down ever so slightly, like a kid preparing for a really big jump on a trampoline. “Get ready,” he instructed.

Dib held Gir up in front of his face like a shield.

Bounce, bounce…and then Zim pressed himself parallel to the floor, giving him the momentum to bound upwards with a singularly powerful leap. Dib was almost impressed; it seemed like he was going to reach the ceiling without issue — until Zim began to drop again, just short of his goal. Instinctively, his PAK legs drove into the walls to keep him from falling, prompting a smattering of tiny lightning bolts to crackle up the metal appendages and towards his body. Spewing out a trail of “OW OW OW!”s, he scuttled up the foot or so to his destination, finally roosting on the ceiling.

“ARE YOU READY?!” he shouted down at Dib.

“NO!” screamed Dib, but before the word was even halfway out of his mouth, Zim had already begun to pry at the apparent location of the exit panel.

As seconds passed and Zim’s struggle continued, Dib ventured to lower Gir a little bit. Surely if there were defenses in the roof, they would have been triggered by now, right? Leave it to the Irken Empire to armor their bookshelves and their walls, but not their ceilings. Apparently this supposedly intelligent race wasn’t as great as they’d cracked up to—

“ALMOST…GOT IT!” barked Zim, and the metal panel cover snapped off under his scrabbling fingers, clanging loudly to the ground a couple of feet away from Dib. Zim broke into a yell of triumph — a yell that quickly became a shriek of alarm.

An enormous multi-chambered plasma cannon had dropped down through the hatch, training its electronic eye first on Zim, clinging to the ceiling, and then on Dib cowering below.

“That’s a BIG MONKEY!” cried Gir, and in an instant the cannon angled downwards, apparently deciding that the figures on the ground were the cause of the disturbance. Not knowing what else to do, Dib yelped and threw Gir towards it…not very successfully. Gir dropped like a stone, rolled across the ground, and came to a halt near the fallen panel, looking bemused but unharmed.

None of it deterred the cannon in the slightest. Each of its barrels pulsed with a burning red glow, and Dib’s muscles were locked in place, rendering him unable to make even a futile escape effort.

_BANG!_

_CLANG!_

Floor and ceiling swapped places, then faded to black. Dib found himself stretched out on Libraria’s hard tile floor with a palpable weight on his chest. His first thought was, _I’m feeling the weight of death_. Then that seemed a bit too purple prose-y to be the truth, and besides, dead people probably wouldn’t feel their heart beating at their ribcage like it was trying to escape.

So he opened his eyes.

Zim was perched on top of him, his huge claret-colored eyes, dilated with adrenaline, staring into Dib’s face like high-beam searchlights. Folded over into a crouch with his hands clamping Dib’s shoulders, his PAK legs splayed out around him, it was obvious that he’d flung himself down from the ceiling to shove Dib out of the way, a decision that would have required more speed and instinct than conscious thought. For a couple of seconds, Dib thought that this was the most intense experience he’d ever had in his life; his heart _bump-bumped_ so hard that he could feel it in his fingertips.

Then reality flooded back, and with it came a blush that seemed to consume Dib’s entire head. “Get…OFF me!” he cried, squirming beneath Zim’s hands.

Zim didn’t need to be told twice; he sprang to his feet, PAK legs retracting. Even in the dim light, there was no hiding the darker green that had suffused his cheeks. “Disgusting!” he yelled, scrubbing his palms against the front of his tunic.

“You said it!” The moment of intimate contact had left Dib’s flesh crawling.

“Don’t you DARE agree with me!” blared Zim. “And how DARE you show such INGRATITUDE to the mighty Zim, who saved your life…?!”

“Saved my life?!” Dib spun towards him, thunderstruck. “ _Why?!_ You’ve been trying to kill me for a year and half, so what was _that_ about?!”

Zim stared him down, outraged, unbowed, and…silent. He had no answer.

He still hadn’t answered when another noise came in the direction of the roof panel. Dib’s head snapped up, and he fully expected to see the cannon priming for another blast — but the cannon had been knocked from its post and was on the ground, smashed up beyond repair. ( _Could Zim possibly have done THAT?!_ ) Instead, the sound he’d heard was that of a familiar orange ship, hovering close to the surface of Libraria.

“Boys!” called Mala’s voice, and a thick cable flopped down through the panel opening, an offering of escape that couldn’t have been more appealing if it had been the very hand of a space deity reaching down to offer them help. “Grab on!”

Dib eagerly headed for the cable — only to be shoved out of the way almost instantly by Zim, who, of course, _had_ to take hold first, and _had_ to turn up his nonexistent nose at Dib while doing it.

There was no need to climb the rope; Mala, whose tall and wiry build evidently concealed significant strength, hauled both of them in without much difficulty. Within a minute, they were both setting foot in the refreshingly untreacherous ground of the Kri ship, while Gir clusmily flew in behind them, his foot thrusters more than up to the task.

Dib looked around; everyone seemed to be present and accounted for, meaning that he and Zim must have been the last ones to escape from the labyrinth. In particular, he noticed Gaz in the captain’s chair, thumbs twiddling over her GS4 joysticks while Minimoose had made himself right at home on her shoulder. “Gaz?!” exclaimed Dib. “How did you get out of the maze on your own?!”

“What, like it’s hard?” she replied.

The ship’s hatch was closing up now; Mala wiped an arm across her brow, and for the first time, a worm of guilt began to gnaw at Dib’s insides. He hadn’t given much thought to it, what with the all-consuming desire to get out of the library, but now he could no longer ignore the fact that he had triggered the maze system in the first place. “Um…did you get the information you were looking for?”

Mala glanced up at him, her smile strained and cracked. “Well, no. But…when you think about it, I mean, proof is overrated! Who needs evidence?!”

Dib thought that was probably his dad’s philosophy when it came to anything paranormal.

He opened his mouth again — not entirely sure what he would say, but his nervous-talker instincts wouldn’t permit him to stay quiet — but this time, Mala cut him off. “Listen, Dib. I really don’t want to be angry with you, but I’m not a perfect person. I think that it would be better if you just…stayed out of the way for now.”

Dib clamped his mouth shut. Well, there went the goodwill of the one and only adult who’d ever been consistently nice to him. He felt like ramming his head into the wall. All he’d wanted to do was make sure that Zim didn’t try to ruin Mala’s plans, and instead, he’d ended up getting everyone trapped in a labyrinth…and ended up stuck with Zim, of all people. There were really no winners in this situation.

Hanging his head, he trudged in the direction of the stateroom. Maybe it was time to be quiet and unobtrusive and act like the model stowaway that he should have been all along. But before that, he thought, he could use a shower — it would help wash away the strange tingle that had settled under his skin ever since Zim had touched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still reading this, I love you.
> 
> Next chapter, we'll catch up with that other, more well-known resistance group in the IZ universe...


	7. Kri vs. Resisty

The next couple of days seemed like an exceedingly fine time to lay low, so Dib — normally never known for keeping his head down and himself out of trouble — did exactly that. In fact, for over forty-eight hours, he didn’t set foot outside of the stateroom for more than five minutes at a time. Gaz brought him a tray of whatever frozen concoction was served in the galley at mealtimes (she herself was subsisting on Irken candies and snacks, the only food on the ship that she found remotely palatable) so that he didn’t have to come face-to-face with any member of the Kri Society. He could just imagine the sharp hearsay about him that would be flying from the girls’ tongues…but above all, he didn’t want to see Mala and confront her disappointment. He liked Mala, even admired her, and she’d given him a chance, only for him to end up proving that he inevitably disappointed every adult he came across. Like his dad.

He had plenty of time to think about his dad while he was keeping out of sight. In between reading stuff on his phone and playing thumb-candy games (and usually losing) he would stare at the little _No Reception_ icon in the corner of the screen, thinking of Earth. His dad would definitely have noticed his and Gaz’s absence by now. Not even Membrane was _that_ negligent. But whether or not he would be worried was another matter entirely. There were so many times that he should have been concerned about his children — where was he when that giant hamster was on the rampage, or when Zim was prancing around town in a Megadoomer, or when Tak was planning to hollow out the Earth and fill it with snacks? — yet hadn’t lifted a finger, or even seemed to realize that they were in danger. And when Dib _did_ ask his father for help, he was usually rewarded by being called insane. Yeah, there was the Florpus thing, but what did that matter when Membrane didn’t even think that stuff had really happened? The more that Dib thought about it, the more he became petulantly glad that he’d taken off into space to do something useful. Other than wishing he had more clothes and equipment, he wasn’t homesick in the slightest.

Thinking of his dad was okay, because resentment was a great antidote for shame, and it made him feel that he had a reason to press ahead. The problem was that sometimes, he couldn’t help thinking about Zim instead.

Zim crouched on his chest, eyes shimmering like liquid, the thump of Dib’s heartbeat reverberating throughout his entire body, the utterly destroyed weapon scattered into shrapnel on the ground behind them…the images and sensations recurred in Dib’s mind all too often. When they did, his skin would feel overheated and writhing, like a layer beneath his outer flesh had suddenly turned into magma. It was nonsensical, and he knew it — it wasn’t like he and Zim had never touched before, they’d had enough physical fights, wrestled more times than Dib could count — but understanding that his feelings were irrational didn’t stop them from bubbling up, over and over again. And all of it was compounded by the knowledge that _Zim had saved him._ Zim, who never cared for Dib’s well-being, truce or not, who never cared for Dib in the slightest unless Dib was somehow of use to him, had passed up an opportunity to escape cleanly while his mortal enemy became a stain on the floor…had, in fact, apparently attacked a deadly cannon to stop that very thing from happening.

No matter what angle Dib approached it from, he couldn’t figure out why; he was just glad that Zim had not come into the stateroom since Dib had made his hasty retreat.

On the third day, Mala intercepted Dib on his way back from the bathroom, shortly before dinner. When she called his name, he had no choice but to stop, knowing that the time to face the music was at hand. He knew what was coming — his dad had reprimanded him enough times — but it was so much worse with someone who he couldn’t dismiss with the thought that _they just don’t understand, I’m trying to save the human race here!_

“Dib,” Mala repeated in a softer tone as she approached him. He became painfully aware of how tall she was, for an Irken or even for a human; all six-plus feet of her towered over him forebodingly.

“Yes, ma’am — I mean, sir?” said Dib, keeping his eyes fixed on her metal-plated boots. The guilt clotted in his voice was horribly obvious.

“No need for that,” said Mala dismissively, and…almost affectionately? He took the risk of looking at her face. There was a very slight smile there, tolerant, knowledgeable, the kind of smile you might see on a mother who knew exactly which child had pilfered cookies from the jar, but found that behavior more amusing than reprehensible. Or so he imagined. He’d never had a mother to look at him like that, or any other way.

She continued, “I haven’t seen you for a couple of days. I figured I had better make sure that you were doing okay. You’re not hurt or anything, right?”

He stared at her, aghast. “I’m staying out of your way. You told me to, remember?”

“I didn’t mean for days and days!” Her voice was still light, and now she crouched down to his level, removing some of the feeling of being presided over by some mountainous judge. “Just for a few hours at most. I’ll admit that I was angry, Dib, but that’s why I asked you to step away from me. I didn’t want to lose my temper and end up yelling at you.”

“You didn’t want to yell at me?” He was instantly skeptical. “That’s weird.”

“Me not wanting to yell at you is weird?”

“Uh, yeah. Yelling is just what grown-ups _do._ Especially when I mess up somehow!”

Mala’s brows crinkled. “Who are the grown-ups that yell at you, Dib?”

“All of them. Miss Bitters. The other teachers. My dad…sometimes.” Although Professor Membrane was often more coldly disappointed than he was angry and scolding; it all depended on the offense.

“Ah. I suppose that makes sense.” She reached up, rolling the bead on her antenna between two fingers. “But I don’t really feel that I have a right to yell at you that way, Dib. After all, you’re not my child — you’re not even my student.”

“I guess that’s true,” he conceded. “But you told me not to do something, and then I did it, so I just figured…you know…”

“I’m sure you meant well,” she assured him. “Honestly, I should have expected it. After all, I’ve tried to keep an eye on Zim, so I know all about your little rivalry—“

“It’s not a ‘little rivarly’!” protested Dib. “It’s a battle for the entire fate of planet Earth!”

“It _was_ ,” Mala corrected. “But Zim told me that when you two were in the mirror maze on Libraria, you made a truce. By the way, I truly hope that you’ll keep up your end of it. Zim is taking it very seriously.”

“I’ll keep it up if he does.” He paused. “Wait, what do you mean he’s taking it very seriously?”

She unfolded herself back to her full height. “Come to dinner and ask him yourself.”

So Dib followed her to the dining hall and sat down to dinner, but he didn’t go anywhere near Zim. The thoughts of his extraterrestrial foe had become bothersome enough without having to wonder about what, exactly, it meant that he was _taking their truce very seriously_.

* * *

Other than a few sidelong glances, Dib and Zim didn’t actually communicate with each other until the next afternoon. Bored of the stateroom and no longer feeling too skittish to venture out, Dib was hanging out in the bridge, despite an assortment of annoyed glares from the Irken girls. Skoodge, at least, was as welcoming as ever, which turned out to be a good thing; Dib still felt a bit too guilty to ask Mala too many questions, so it was from Skoodge that he learned what the plan was from here.

“We’re edging back into Irken-controlled space,” Skoodge explained, outlining their path with his fingertip on a digital map screen. “Libraria is on the outskirts of Irken territory, so after we set off all the alarms there, we crossed the border again. Now we’re coming in again through this emptier area.” He indicated their current location, which was far from the cluster of colorful dots that must have been the center of Irken civilization. “We’re doing a quick supply run…and then it’s time to actually go to Irk.”

“Does Irk know about us? I mean, you — I mean, the Kri Society?” asked Dib. “Especially after that disaster on Libraria…”

Skoodge shook his head. “Mameen’s been keeping an eye on their transmissions, and they haven’t mentioned us, so we don’t think so. It’s not like this is the first time somebody’s tried to break into the Irken archives, anyway. If I was them, I wouldn’t suspect that a resistance group had formed just because some alarms went off on an obscure planet.”

Dib nodded, then asked thoughtfully, “Are there many resistance groups?”

“As far as I know, we’re the only one.”

A system alert began to trill on one of the girls’ systems. Tee, the navigator, tapped something on her screen, zoomed in, and squinted. “Uh…Tak, can you take a look at this?”

“Put it up on the big screen,” instructed Tak.

The bridge’s windscreen ceased displaying the starfield in their immediate vicinity, seeming to jerk forward towards some tiny object puttering by in the distance. Tee tapped to make a target encircle this object, along with some Irken-language glyphs that Dib stared at, hoping to divine their meaning through sheer force of will.

“A ship?” said Tak. “I know that we’re in a bit of a dead zone out here, but a ship isn’t really that remarkable.”

“There’s something odd about it,” Tee replied, pushing the zoom as far as it would go. “The way it’s shaped…I haven’t seen a ship like that before.”

Dib was no expert on spacecraft, as much as he would have liked to be, but he knew enough to agree with her assessment. The ship before them was gunmetal gray, made of flattened, angular shapes, unlike the more colorful and bulbous designs of Irken craft. The main body of the vessel was augmented by two forward-thrusting arms, as if it were a superhero flying forward with fists outstretched to punch the air.

He’d hardly finished thinking when Blis spoke up: “That’s a VRT-1220-03 Light Battlecruiser with front-mounted laser cannons.”

“VRT?” echoed Tak. “A Vort ship?”

Blis nodded. “But they haven’t manufactured any Light Battlecruisers since shortly after the Irken-Vortian Treaty was signed.”

“And the last were destroyed during Operation Impending Doom Two,” ventured Tenn from her station.

Dib suddenly felt as though someone had gotten uncomfortably close to him. He turned around and, while Skoodge was still standing a respectable distance away, there was Zim practically breathing down the back of his neck, his eyes fixated on the windscreen display.

“Why are you standing like that?” complained Dib.

Zim’s eyes refocused on him with a frown. “Like _what_?”

“Shut up,” interrupted Tak. “Does anyone know where Elite Mala is?”

“In her quarters,” Skoodge ventured. “Talking to her Earth contact.”

Dib felt a small frisson — he’d nearly forgotten about that particular puzzle piece — but this obviously would not be the occasion that he got any answers, because Tak promptly said, “Well, go and get her, then. But remember to knock first. You know that she doesn’t want anyone barging in and seeing her Earth contact by mistake.”

Skoodge hurried off. About half a minute passed in which a weird, heavy silence settled over the bridge. Everyone had gathered here, Dib realized — Gaz, Minimoose, and even Gir were hanging around the fringes of the group, drawn by the premonition that something was about to happen. Something significant…and quite possibly something stupid, as well.

Mala entered, altering the strange mood if not quite destroying it entirely, with Skoodge at her heels. “What’s the problem?” she asked Tak. “Unfriendlies?”

“We’re not certain, sir. There’s a ship almost within striking distance of us…a Vortian ship, if Blis is to be believed. Of unknown origin.”

“If it’s a Vortian ship, I’d assume that its origin is Vort,” said Mala absently, her antennae pricking upwards as she stepped around to her captain’s chair.

Dib took a second to wrack his brain for anything that he knew about the planet Vort. The name was familiar…oh, right, he’d gotten some information about it from the database of Tak’s ship, hadn’t he? During that time where Zim tried to bring the Tallest to Earth. Yes, Dib remembered now; Vort was a former ally of Irk, conquered by some Invader or other, now converted into a “military research prison.” Uneasiness began to stir within him. If Vort was under Irken control, then this ship could very well be, as Mala had put it, an _unfriendly._

Speaking of Mala, she’d been leaning forward, staring at the ship as it slowly drifted closer to them; now she leaned back with a thoughtful frown. “That’s an older ship. Irk retired that model and destroyed all the ones that survived. I wonder…could it be a refugee ship?”

Dib heard a sharp intake of breath as Zim gasped behind him. “Conspirators against the Irken Empire!” he cried.

“You might be right,” Mala said. “And in that case, there’s really only one thing to do, isn’t there…?”

“What’s that?” asked Tak.

“Hail them. After all, we’re conspirators against the Irken Empire, too.” And with that, she jammed down a button on the arm of her chair.

Four seconds later, the assorted Kri Society members and sort-of members were treated to a view of the inside of the Vort ship, dark and sleek and metallic. It was difficult to make out all the details, however, because a large crowd of aliens filled the camera’s field of view. Blobby aliens, three-headed aliens, aliens in cloaks, aliens that appeared to be made of metal…the last time that Dib had seen so many different species, it had been in a cell on Moo-Ping 10. The aliens on the unknown ship were all crowded around a central captain’s chair, not unlike Mala’s, which enthroned a small creature with goggles and two horns on their head. Urgent whispering rustled through the speakers. It would have been a perfect picture of a somber war conference, if not for that fact that one of the aliens, with mucus-colored skin and a large spot on their head, was staring awkwardly into the camera.

“Um…hello?” said Mala.

The motley crew of aliens turned towards her instantly. “ _GAH!”_ shrieked the horned alien. “What did you do?! I _told_ you not to answer yet!”

“Oh,” said the mucus-colored alien who was staring into the camera. “I thought you said to yes answer yet.”

The horned alien spluttered inarticulately for several long seconds, then cleared their throat and pushed themself upright against the back of their chair. “You have reached the ship of the Resisty!” they declared in a forcibly deep timbre. “Foul Irken scum, prepare to be…uh…”

Mala tilted her head. “Sorry, the ship of the what?”

The horned alien deflated and muttered, in the tone of someone who had been mocked many times for saying the same thing that they were about to say again, “The Resisty.”

The bridge came alive with whispers; all the girls were cavorting with each other, sounding much like they had when Zim first came onto the ship declaring his inherent superiority. Dib guessed that it was the closest that any of them could get to expressing amusement.

“I see,” said Mala carefully. “Well, er, if you’re called the Resisty, would I be wrong to assume that you…resist things?”

“We resist the Irken Empire!” The horned alien’s finger stabbed towards her. “And as you represent the Irken Empire, prepare to—“

“Woah, woah, hold on!” she exclaimed. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. You see, we aren’t with the Empire. We’re the Kri Society!”

Their eyes narrowed. “The what?”

“The Kri Society,” she repeated. “You know, K-R-I, like Irk backwards? We’re also a resistance group!”

“Never heard of you,” they said suspiciously. “And why would any of you want to resist the Irken Empire? You’re all Irkens!”

“Except that one,” commented a cone-shaped alien who was hovering alongside the horned alien, indicating Dib’s approximate location with a dip of its body. “That one looks like a pirate monkey to me!”

Dib frowned, drawing his coat around himself self-consciously.

Tak spoke up, “Well, we’ve never heard of any group called the Resisty. For all we know, you could be double-agents — after all, Vort is under the control of the Empire!”

“Now, now, Tak, double agents aren’t really the Empire’s style,” soothed Mala. “Look, why don’t we just introduce ourselves? I’ll go first. I’m former Elite Commander Mala, previously the successor to Tallest Miyuki, now the leader of the Kri Society. How about you?”

The horned alien squinted at her so hard that Dib wondered how they could even see her…but then relented. “Lard Nar, former scientist working under the Irken-Vortian treaty, now the leader of the Resisty.” He paused. “Tallest Miyuki…she was the one who forged the treaty. It was after her death that everything on Vort fell apart. They blamed us for her death, you know.”

Mala nodded, suddenly grave. “I know.”

“I remember hearing about an Elite Commander Mala. I think they said you died.” He stiffened, glaring at her sternly through the screen. “You want to put yourself back in power, don’t you?”

“That’s not the priority,” she replied. “I’m more concerned with the fact that the new Tallest wants to destroy the universe.”

Behind his goggles, Lard Nar’s beady little eyes froze into a horrified gawk. “…excuse me?”

“You don’t know? The new Tallest. He intends to…”

But there was no need for her to finish her sentence; the damage had already been done. All at once, the assembled Resisty crew erupted into chaos, running and flailing about their ship while releasing assorted screams. A blobby creature appeared to vomit all over itself, the mucus-green alien who’d answered the call sprinted past the camera in a panic, and Lard Nar’s cone-shaped friend began to roll around on the ground, wailing, “I DON’T WANNA DIE!” Lard Nar himself looked trapped, eyes darting back and forth behind the lenses of his goggles, hands trembling. Finally he sucked in a deep breath and bellowed, “All right! Get ahold of yourselves!”

The Resisty’s fit slowly petered out. Mala remained in place, watching them without any hint of judgement in her eyes…unlike the girls, none of whom appeared to be very impressed. Dib glanced to either side of him, noting that both Zim and Skoodge looked as perplexed as he felt.

When the commotion had finally quieted down, Mala spoke again. “Maybe this is fate. Maybe our two groups can help each other out.”

Lard Nar straightened up. “Hold it. I’m still not sure I trust you. And where do you get your information?”

“By hacking into Irken communication channels. As for trusting me, well, I understand that. We’ve only just met, after all. Maybe if we could discuss things in person?”

The whole room rustled with whispers as both the Resisty and the Kri Society began to discuss the logistics of this.

“Sir, is that really a good idea?” murmured Tak, leaning towards Mala. “I think you’re right that they aren’t double agents, but they don’t exactly seem very…formidable.”

“Let’s give them a chance,” Mala murmured back. “If we can bolster our numbers, we should. There are so few of us compared to the Armada.”

“Quality over quantity, Elite Mala,” said Tenn.

Mala sighed. “Look, Vortians have never been renown for their military strength, I’ll grant you that. But fighting skills can be taught. If we’re fighting for the same cause…”

She cut herself off when Lard Nar ceased conferring with his crew and faced forward again. “Permission to come aboard will be granted on the following conditions!” he declared. “We’ll link our ships. You’ll come here, to our territory. And you can’t bring any weapons with you!”

“Conditions accepted,” she agreed. “I’m going to initiate the ship-to-ship docking procedure. Speak to you soon.”

Lard Nar nodded, and then his grim face flickered off of the screen as Mala began pushing buttons and stroking control panels.

Zim took this opportunity to march up to her, squirming between Tak and Tenn to take the position of honor by Mala’s side. “I don’t trust them, Mameen,” he declared. “They are all a bunch of filthy, degenerate rebels!”

“Yes, Zim,” she replied patiently, pulling back; the screen showed a diagram of the Kri ship attaching itself to the Resisty ship, accompanied by more Irken text. She straightened her gauntlets and turned around. “But so are we.”

* * *

Mala selected Tak, Tenn, and Blis to bring to the meeting with her. Tenn could review the Resisty’s battle strategies and incorporate allies into the Kri’s own plans, Blis could evaluate the ship and its weaponry, and Tak was a versatile Irken who was always useful to have around. Tee would remain behind to keep the ship on course, and Skoodge had been tasked with making sure that _certain other parties_ did not come within the vicinity of the meeting.

Mala loved Zim, of course, and she was growing fonder and fonder of Dib, but both of them had proven to be liabilities so far. They got so wrapped up in their little rivalry that it put blinders on their vision of the big picture. At least Dib was on board with the Kri’s mission overall; Zim’s unquestioning, enthusiastic loyalty to the Irken Empire meant that he was still a work-in-progress, and it seemed prudent to leave his more responsible “brother” to prevent him from endangering the diplomatic negotiations. As for Dib (and Gaz), the less they were involved, the better she could fulfill her obligation to get them back to Earth safely.

Flanked by her crew, she stepped past the threshold of the link bay, which opened up into the bridge of the Resisty’s ship. It looked brighter than it had on screen – a testament to low camera quality, or an attempt to floodlight the Irkens so that they couldn’t hide anything? Probably the latter, as the Resisty members eyed her like feed animals watching a predator set loose in their cage. Even though she meant them no harm, Mala felt the creep of guilt just knowing that her civilization had probably destroyed the planets of every race present.

Lard Nar was waiting for her in the center of the bridge, shadowing her with his eyes. She thrust her hand at him. “Nice to meet you in person.”

He squinted up at her and angled his head to peer up the length of her arm.

“Nothing up my gauntlet. I promise,” she said with a knowing smile.

Reluctantly, he took hold of her hand and gave it a single, perfunctory shake. “Welcome aboard, Elite Mala,” he said begrudgingly. “I must say, I’m interested to hear why a bunch of Irkens want to set themselves up against their own Empire.”

“We don’t consider it to be _our_ Empire.” She glanced at her accompanying crew; they stood in a perfect line, each one of them straight and militaristic – even Blis, who had never seen active duty as a soldier. “Irken society as it stands now hurts everyone, including the people who serve it. Irkens can be transgressed against, too.”

“At least you didn’t lose your home and watch your people be forced into slavery!” shouted a cloaked Resisty member with luminous eyes who was standing on one of the upper galleries. A soft but angry murmur of agreement rose up.

Mala bowed her head repentantly. “I’m not going to pretend that our situations are identical. And I can’t bring back what the Empire has taken from you.” She wished that she could. She might even have had a hand in wiping out the planets of some of those present – not only had she had her stint as an Invader like any high-achieving Irken adolescent, but in adulthood, how many invasions had she approved and foreseen? Yes, she had felt bad about it even then, but she had kept on doing it. “First things first, we have to keep the new Tallest from destroying the universe. After that, maybe we can help you take something back.”

The air grew thick with discontented mutters. Lard Nar told her suspiciously, “We don’t like to make deals with Irkens. Your leaders have agreed to help people like us before, and look at how that turned out!”

She said quietly, “I’m sorry that you were blamed for Miyuki’s death. She never wanted to ostracize Vort; you were one of her most important allies. And I know that you weren’t responsible for what happened.”

“There’s more than just Vortians here!” shouted someone from on the gallery. “My planet didn’t do anything to Irk!”

“Irkens don’t need an excuse!” agreed another voice.

She lifted her hands with the fingers spread wide, displaying her lack of weaponry, her absence of ill intentions. Behind her, the girls were stiffening, becoming cold and hard in response to the hatred diffusing in the air. “I could stand here trying to make amends all day,” she started, “but the truth is, _I can’t_. Nothing I do can make up for what’s been done to you. All I can offer is my assistance in making sure that it never happens again. If we can stop the universe from being destroyed—”

“If you’re telling the truth about that,”somebody commented, but at the mention of the impending peril, the mood of the room immediately slid from hostile back to nervous.

Mala stifled a sigh; she fully understood the Resisty’s immediate distrust of her, but at the same time, if she had to fight to prove every word she spoke as true, they would never get anything done. But it seemed like they weren’t ready to fully dismiss the possibility of universal cataclysm. Looking at Lard Nar, at the way that his beady eyes flicked back and forth behind his goggles, she could tell that he, at least, was taking the threat seriously. “Why do they want to do that?” he asked. “What could the Empire possibly have to gain from…?”

“In reality, nothing,” she answered. “In the twisted mind of the new Tallest, though…he thinks that he can replace this universe with a new one where Irkens will be gods instead of just conquerors. It’s a ridiculous idea. Even if you don’t trust me, can you at least believe that I’d rather not have my entire existence wiped out?”

He paused, then assented, “Yes. At least, I don’t see what the point would be in you lying about that. So what exactly are you planning to do?”

“The only thing we can do,” she answered grimly. “We’ve got to face the Armada head-on, get through them to the Control Brains, and reform Irk from the bottom up. Even if we have to tear out all of their infrastructure to do it.”

The cone-shaped alien who had been hovering near Lard Nar the whole time declared, “That’s all? Sounds easy!”

“No it doesn’t!” Lard Nar burst out. “It sounds _impossible!_ ”

“Oh,” said the cone.

“That’s why we need more people!” exclaimed Mala quickly. “The more of us there are, the less impossible it will be! We’re slowly making our way towards Irk, and once we get there, we can rile up all the downtrodden civilians and get them on our side. Almost all Irkens have some useful combat training — including us! And don’t you think it’ll be easier to take down the Armada with the help of the race who knows better than anyone how it works…?”

The bridge rustled with uncertain whispers. The ring of truth was in her words, but would the Resisty believe that the benefits of allying with a former Irken Elite Commander outweighed the potential drawbacks…?

She was startled when Tak spoke up. “And how can you help?” she demanded.

Lard Nar recoiled. “Excuse me?”

“Tak…” said Mala in a soft warning tone, and her second-in-command bowed respectfully, but continued speaking.

“I apologize for speaking out of turn, Elite Mala, but this is a vital question,” said Tak, before turning her steely-eyed gaze back on Lard Nar. “How can you and your organization help _us?_ All this time, we’ve been trying to explain what we can do for you, but it takes two to make an alliance. Why should we ally ourselves with you? What can you bring to the mission?”

Mala bit her lip, wondering if the meeting was now effectively over. She supposed that it was to be expected that she, a more compassionate type, would focus on reparations and taking the Resisty under her wing, while her less sentimental crew would be focused on the practical applications; still, given their tentative status here, it would have been better to make the point a bit less antagonistically.

The Resisty members made confused eyes at each other. Tak took another step forward. “Well? What are your strengths in battle? How many military victories do you have on your record? Do you even have a plan, besides just generally _resisting_?”

“Well, uh…” Lard Nar averted his eyes. “We aren’t…I mean, most of us aren’t…soldiers. I was a scientist. I helped design the Massive, I still have all the plans for it—”

“There is no more Massive,” said Blis in her dull voice. “It was destroyed in a Florpus hole. The Tallest and his entourage have been cruising around in a new ship called the Hypermassive, and I guess you don’t have the plans for that, huh?”

Evidently he didn’t, as he immediately shut his mouth.

“Let me try putting it another way,” Mala spoke up, injecting her voice with an artificial zeal. “Why don’t you tell me about what you’ve all done as a group? You know, share your acts of resistance and such!”

Another long pause. Lard Nar’s expression was now shifting from nervous to downright embarrassed; it was his cone-shaped friend who ended up responding, excitedly proclaiming, “Ooh, ooh, me! Pick me! I’ve got an act of resistance to share!”

She plastered a smile across her face. “I’d love to hear it, Mister…uh…”

“Shloonktapooxis!” He beamed. “One time, we attacked the Massive to get their snacks! We were firing our lasers at it like ‘pew pew, pew pew pew!’ And we even wrote our name on it!”

“That’s good!” exclaimed Mala.

“Yeah, but then it turned out that we were only able to do it because their power core was horrible. And then they swapped their power core with ours, and we had to activate the shrinky self-destruct and then run away to get our backup ship!”

“…that’s less good.”

Tenn side-eyed her companions, silently emphasizing her earlier _quality over quantity_ comment, but Mala contrived not to notice. “Okay,” she went on, “so what I’m hearing is that none of you have any formal combat experience. Is that right?”

The embarrassment-wrought silence that followed her answered the question better than any words could have.

“That’s fine!” she declared, slipping back into her enthusiastic façade. “Fighting skills can be taught. Maybe we could assess your potential right now.” She turned to Lard Nar and spread her arms out. “Hit me!”

He recoiled, as if she’d suggested that she should hit him rather than the other way around.

“No tricks,” she promised. “I’m not going to hurt you. Go on, hit me!”

Lard Nar’s eyes flitted around to the crewmates closest to him, including Shloonktapooxis, as though seeking advice; none of them seemed to know what to think. Finally, he took a deep breath, stepped back, and charged at Mala…if such a slow and lumbering gait could even be called a charge. Long seconds before he reached her, she sidestepped, and he didn’t react fast enough to change direction or even stop. Instead, he skidded straight into a cluster of Resisty members, scattering them like bowling pins, and finally ending up with his horns tangled in the uniform of a hulking three-headed alien who looked only mildly surprised that their leader was head-butting their stomach.

Tak, Tenn, and Blis shot Mala identical unimpressed looks that declared exactly how useful they thought the Resisty would be to the Kri Society.

“…it seems like I’ve got my work cut out for me,” Mala said.

* * *

“It feels like we have been condemned to prison for the duration of this miserable meeting,” grumbled Zim.

Dib glanced up at him. “Prison?”

“We’ve been disbarred, condemned, excluded! Unable even to watch from the outside looking in!” ranted Zim. “Who knows what _hideous_ things could be happening on that _hideous_ Vortian ship right now?! They could be torturing Mameen! Oh, eh, and the other girls too, I guess. But mainly they could be torturing Mameen!”

“I think we’d know if they were,” contradicted Skoodge politely.

“But we _don’t_ know, Skoodge!” countered Zim. “That’s the whole _point_! They could be doing _anything_!”

Dib glanced around the mostly-empty bridge. On the opposite side of the room from them, Tee busily attended to her console; meanwhile, Gaz and the boys had gathered into a loose circle, across which they exchanged tense expressions as they tried to imagine how the meeting was going. (Or at least, the boys were; Gaz hardly cared.) Dib sort of understood what Zim was getting at with the whole prison comparison, but there was another situation that struck him as a better parallel…

“It’s more like detention,” he commented.

Zim flicked an antennae forward. “I have not experienced your Earth-school ‘detention.’”

“Sure you have. I’m pretty sure Miss Bitters has nailed you with it a couple of times.”

“The Bitters human would never dare to _nail_ Zim!” he scoffed self-importantly. “But when she banished me to detention, I just got Gir to create a diversion and then escaped.”

“Mmm-hmm!” agreed Gir from somewhere just within earshot.

“Well, it’s a lot of waiting around, separated from the important things that are happening,” explained Dib. “You know, like we’re doing right now?”

Zim grunted with neither assent nor dissent, folding his hands behind his back and starting to pace around the fringes of their rough circle. His military stride looked stiff and unwieldy, and his antennae were pressed flat against his skull; Dib didn’t think he’d ever seen Zim agitated in quite this way before. Normally the Irken was either a bundle of nerves prone to shrieking at the slightest disturbance, or he was just angry and confrontational, but right now he seemed to be treading on an uneasy middle ground between the two.

“Are you really that worried about Mala?” Dib asked.

Zim dug his heels into the metal floor and scowled. “She is my Mameen! Would you not be concerned if _your_ mother was in the hands of…THE ENEMY?!”

Dib shrugged. “I don’t know. Like I told you the other day, I’ve never had a mother.”

“That’s illogical dookie,” declared Zim. “I know the filthy secrets of human reproduction, and your species requires a mother in order to exist!”

“True. But I’m adopted, like you.”

Zim blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Eh?”

“Adopted. You know, when somebody other than your biological parents raises you? Like how Mala—“

“Zim knows the definition of adoption!” he snapped. “But what makes you so certain that _you_ are adopted?!”

“It’s not hard to figure out,” said Dib. “First of all, Gaz is adopted” — he sensed his sister lift her head slightly at the mention of her name — “so it’s not like my dad has never done it before. Second, who exactly would he have a kid with? My dad’s first, best, and only love is science. I mean, some of the women in his fan club practically throw themselves at his feet, but he’s never even _looked_ at them, let alone had a kid with one. Third, if he _did_ act completely out of character and father a child with someone, where exactly did they go? And finally, I’m absolutely _nothing_ like my dad. It just makes sense that I’m adopted.”

Zim stared at Dib flatly for two or three seconds, then said, “But you look like him.”

Dib shuffled his feet, a little awkwardly. “Well…”

“And he’s never said that you’re adopted,” Gaz interjected. “I’ve _always_ known that I was adopted. He explained it to me when I was still in diapers, he’s got pictures around the house from the day he brought me home from the orphanage — it’s no big secret. But he’s never even mentioned the possibility that you’re adopted, too…and there’s no adoption day pictures.”

“Maybe I somehow disappointed him even when I was a baby, I don’t know,” retorted Dib, frustrated. “Whose side are you on? You _know_ I have to be adopted! It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

“After my successful infiltration of your house, I have also ascertained that you and your Dib-father share some interests,” interrupted Zim. “You both enjoy scientific processes, and evidence, and the betterment of your disgusting brain-rotted species—“

“Woah, hey, that’s going way too far!” shouted Dib, his expression darkening as he turned on Zim. “I am _nothing_ like him!”

Zim was unfazed by the outburst. “You are covering yourself with lies, Dib-thing,” he declared smugly.

Dib scowled, looking back and forth between his sister and his worst enemy (or…former worst enemy? Temporarily-on-hold worst enemy, now that their truce was in effect?). “So what exactly do you two think? That Dad _stole_ me or something? Or what — I came from some secret tragic love affair, and my birth mother died in childbirth, and Dad just happens to not have any pictures or mementos of her, and for some reason he’s kept this a secret all this time because it’s too painful for him to think about or whatever? Please. You of all people should know how ridiculous that is, Gaz. Love and pining and dark family secrets aren’t exactly Dad’s style.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” she responded evenly. “I never said it was something like that. I’m just saying that your adoption theory has some room for doubt.”

He glared at her, trying to be outraged, but unable to feel anything more than simmering resentment. She was right, of course. Before Zim had ever come to Earth, Dib had been trying to ignore things like his physical resemblance to his father, or the fact that Membrane had been so open about adopting Gaz and yet never breathed a word about such a thing to Dib…or, conversely, the fact that all of Dib’s snooping — his dad being absent so much gave him ample opportunity to peruse unlocked rooms and unprotected computer files — had never uncovered any evidence of a birth mother or, indeed, any inkling of an alternate explanation for his presence in the Membrane household. In the end, he’d decided that it was all a bunch of nothing that just added up to more nothing. What else could he do but believe in the simplest explanation?

“Maybe you’re a clone,” suggested Zim with a cheeky little grin. “A sort of Clembrane one-point-oh!”

Dib mentally compared his own pale, sharp-featured visage to the clone of Membrane that Zim had created — which resembled nothing so much as a bloated inflatable goldfish with half the air let out of it — and he couldn’t help laughing. The tense moment receded into the distance.

“Eh? What are you laughing at?” demanded Zim, eyes narrowing down into suspicious slits.

“You made a joke,” said Dib.

Zim relaxed, his face softening, and…was that a slight smile at the corners of his mouth…?

Before Dib could so much as process what he was seeing, the ship reverberated with a metallic clang. Immediately, all of them — yes, even Tee — were looking around wildly, trying to pinpoint the direction of the sound. “Did that come from the link bay?” exclaimed Skoodge.

“MAMEEN!” Zim bristled, his antennae swinging straight up from his head. “I _knew_ it! I _knew_ that those degenerate rebels couldn’t be trusted…!”

“Hang on, Zim!” called Skoodge, scrambling to position himself between Zim and the easiest path to the door. “We don’t know for sure that anything bad is happening, and besides, Mameen can take care of herself!”

“And I really don’t want to piss her off again…” added Dib.

A series of rapid metallic thunks punctuated his words.

“…but that really doesn’t sound good,” Dib admitted nervously.

Zim wasn’t hanging around to hear any more reasonable arguments; his PAK legs emerged so quickly that they practically launched him up and forward, over Skoodge’s head and out of the bridge. Dib and Skoodge exchanged a glance, then took off after him, both on their own two legs (not that Dib had any choice in the matter). Gaz just side-eyed them for a moment before pulling out her GS4.

As they tailed Zim, Dib only caught a few flashes of glittering PAK legs or the vibrant hem of a magenta tunic, but he focused on these fleeting glimpses so thoroughly that he paid no attention to his surroundings until they had crossed over into the Resisty’s ship. Suddenly, dingy orange gave way to gunmetal gray, and the bulbous shapes of Irken design became sleek and angular. Stunned by the appearance of two dozen gawking alien faces, he skidded to a halt; Skoodge barreled into him from behind, knocking them both off-balance.

As Dib picked himself off the floor, he spotted Mala and Lard Nar in the center of the Resisty bridge. Although they were currently gaping at Zim, their postures suggested an interrupted spar; had a fight broken out? But even if it had, Dib suspected that barging in like this was only going to make things worse…

“MAMEEN! ZIM WILL SAVE YOU!” Zim sprang forward on his PAK legs, straight on a collision course for Lard Nar—

And Mala caught him by the collar, dangling him at arm’s length while his mechanical legs writhed uselessly around him. “Zim!” she cried. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Saving you from the filthy degenerate rebels!” he shouted, swinging back and forth in her grasp with his frenzied struggles to escape. “No pig-smelly traitors to the Empire will attack you while I’m around!”

“They weren’t attacking me! I was assessing their combat abilities!” Holding Zim up a little higher, she turned to Lard Nar, flustered. “I am _so_ sorry about this. He didn’t mean any harm, really, he just…”

But Lard Nar’s eyes had blown wide behind his goggles, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Zim. “ _You!”_ he shrieked.

“Me! I am Zim!” Zim retracted his PAK legs about halfway. “Release me, Mameen!”

“I know who you are!” Lard Nar shouted. “We’ve met before, remember?”

“…eh, no, not really.” Zim shrugged. “Who are you again?”

“Lard Nar! From Vort Research Station 9!” For the second time since meeting the Kri, Lard Nar was trembling…but this time, judging by his expression, it was from anger and indignation rather than fear. “You’re the one who killed Tallest Miyuki and got Vort blamed for it!”

A near-simultaneous gasp went up from the Resisty members on the galleries. Tak, Tee, and Blis, who were hovering a few feet away from Mala, looked incredulous. Even though Dib had only heard of Tallest Miyuki through a few anecdotes of Mala’s, he understood the gravity of the accusation, and was just as shocked as everyone else. In fact, the only people who _didn’t_ look surprised were Mala, who seemed intensely uncomfortable…and Zim himself.

“I didn’t do that,” said Zim in a mildly puzzled tone of voice. “You Vortians did that! You unleashed the infinite energy-absorbing thingy right near the infinite energy-producing thingy, and it gobbled her up!”

“No, _you_ released the infinite energy-absorbing thingy!” cried Lard Nar. “You _created_ it! We were just the scapegoats!”

Zim’s eyes took on a slightly glazed, disconnected look that Dib recognized from their time on Libraria — as if Zim’s mind had temporarily decoupled from his body. Then his expression sharpened into self-righteous anger. “LIES!” he screeched, clawing at the air in front of him. “You are a LYING LIAR!”

“What are you even talking about?!” protested Lard Nar. “We were there! We _saw_ what happened! You can’t make us swallow the same lines you fed to the Irken Empire!”

Mala finally lowered Zim to the floor, but she set him down behind her, in such a position that she could interpose herself between him and Lard Nar. “I am _so_ sorry he interrupted,” she said hurriedly, shooting a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Really, I am. I told him to stay on our ship. Dragging up all these bad memories isn’t exactly productive…maybe we could wind down before we resume our meeting, have a few snacks…?”

Lard Nar turned his face towards the tiered galleries containing his crewmates, then gave his head a resolute shake. “The meeting is over, Elite Mala,” he said. “It’s a shame, because you seem okay for an Irken. But I’m not getting my crew involved in any operation involving that…that _menace_!” He shuddered at the very mention of Zim. “He destroys everything he touches! So, it was a good try, but no. I’m not about to subject my crew to him. Best of luck to you…I think you’ll need it.”

Dib more than half-expected her to protest, to point out that the impending destruction of the universe was a bit more dire than any lingering grudges that they might have with Zim, but she didn’t. She only bowed her head politely and said, “I understand. I’ll return to my ship and initiate the undocking procedure.”

She and Lard Nar nodded at one another, held each other’s stares for a few seconds too many, and then awkwardly turned away to continue on their separate paths. Mala grabbed Zim’s hand and dragged him along with her; the girls followed her in military formation; and Dib brought up the rear with Skoodge.

“No great loss, sir,” said Tak when they were out of earshot. “Their abilities were strikingly below average.”

“And there weren’t enough of them to make much of a strategic difference,” added Tenn.

Mala sighed. “Yes, but there are so few of us…and having allies of different races might have helped convince other planets that we’re on the level. Planets that actually have strong militaries.”

“There will be other opportunities,” Tak assured her.

Dib could tell by the way Mala pressed her lips together that she wasn’t so sure of that.

“You don’t need them, Mameen,” declared Zim. “They were just waiting for an opportunity to overtake you! Besides, you have the cleverest, strongest, most powerful Irken Invader ever on your side — ME!”

“Mmhmmm.” She paused and half-turned back. “Zim, Skoodge, will you do me a favor and stay down here to make sure that the airlock closes? We’ve been having some trouble with it breaking down…well, everything tends to break down on this ship.”

“Sir!” agreed Zim, saluting, at the same moment that Skoodge said, “You got it, Mameen!”

She thanked them and continued her steady march back to the bridge with the girls. Dib hesitated to follow her. It seemed preferable to stay here with the people who were _slightly_ less hostile towards him…but in the end, he left Zim and Skoodge behind, hurrying to catch up with Mala. There was something that he wanted to ask her without Zim hearing.

After jogging down a corridor or two, Dib finally pulled up alongside her, overtaking the girls. “Is it true?” he asked in a hushed voice, craning his neck so that he could size up her face.

She frowned. “Is what true, Dib?”

“That Zim _killed_ Tallest Miyuki. Did he really…?”

Tak swaggered into his path like a personal bodyguard fending off the paparazzi. “She doesn’t want to talk about that,” she said aggressively. “Especially not to _you_.”

“Hush, Tak, don’t be presumptuous.” Mala waved her off, then returned her focus to Dib; he couldn’t help noticing the profound weariness in her eyes. “It was an accident. Zim would never intentionally kill a Tallest; he’s loyal to a fault. She was at the research station, he had to elbow in and get her attention with his latest project, and the whole thing was just a perfect storm of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Control Brains told me all about it after it happened.” A bitter edge poked through her words. “They were the ones who claimed that Vort had assassinated her, of course, so that there’d be another planet to invade. But they wanted to demoralize me while I was in their clutches by claiming that my smeet had ‘murdered’ Miyuki. And of course it was a shock, but…that was a long time ago. I’ve come to accept it by now.”

Dib wondered how she could so easily forgive the person who’d murdered her mentor figure, even if said person was her own child…but perhaps it wasn’t as odd as he was making it out to be. From what she’d said, Miyuki had been an unintentional casualty, not much different from, say, a passenger who died in a car accident while the driver survived. Or perhaps a bystander shot by a child playing with a gun that they didn’t realize was loaded…

“And he didn’t want you to get mad at him, so he played it off like he didn’t know what Lard Nar was talking about?” he guessed.

Mala shut her eyes for a moment. “No. He…he really does believe the official version of the events. Zim seems to have…let’s call it a talent for self-deception. When I knew him as a smeet, it wasn’t so bad, just a way for him to convince himself that he was always the best. But now — it’s like he can rewrite his own memory to believe whatever is easiest for him. Or whatever he thinks that the Empire would want him to believe. Why else do you think that he didn’t remember me when we first met again? I guess that when you’re truly considered defective, that’s the only way you can cope…”

Dib didn’t say anything.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said Mala, “I had better go and initiate that undocking procedure before the Resisty think that I’m holding them hostage.”

She continued on her way to the bridge with the girls, but this time, he didn’t even think of accompanying them. The image of Zim crouched on his chest that had been pursuing him for days had now been replaced by memories of the blank look on Zim’s face just before he launched into protestations of innocence — a sort of mental loading period while denial subsumed the truth. If what Mala had just told Dib was true — and his gut instincts as a paranormal investigator told him that it was — then it explained an awful lot about Zim’s behavior, from what had happened today, to his insistence on Libraria that there was some kind of mix-up with Mala’s status in the Empire, to taking so long to realize that he wasn’t a real Invader, and even before that…

Dib felt a cold chill of dread, and for the first time it wasn’t because of what Zim had done, but because of what had been done to Zim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s been hanging in there with me, and also to explain myself. I’ll admit, I was hoping to have more of this story finished by now. But for most of this year I’ve been dealing with an odd form of writer’s block where I haven’t lost interest in this story, I know exactly what’s going to happen, but the actual process of writing down the words feels like a slog. I’m hoping I can unjam myself soon and update more frequently, and I’d like to get at least one more chapter added before the end of the year. Thanks for your patience, and I really hope you’re enjoying the story so far.


	8. The Deadly Perils of Grocery Shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I’m posting this about two months later than I wanted to, but I figure if you guys have stuck with me this long, you’d be able to handle that. As always, I’m forever grateful for your patience and support.

Dib entered the interstellar school cafeteria that was the Kri’s galley, stomach rumbling, but without much hope that lunch would do a lot to change that. For the past two days, dwindling supplies had meant that everyone was on portions equivalent to half of a TV dinner, sufficient for keeping them from starving, but not enough to completely fill anyone’s stomach. He knew better than to complain, though; his presence here was part of the reason why rations were so small.

After collecting another unidentifiable plate from Mala, he took his usual seat, stabbing something purple with a fork and trying to convince himself not to wolf everything down immediately. “I think this is even less than we got for breakfast,” he murmured to Gaz.

Gaz ripped open the top of a bag of Irken-branded cheese puffs. “You think _you_ have it bad? I haven’t eaten anything that doesn’t come in a plastic bag since we left home.”

Dib noticed Zim crossing over towards them, not slinking over after a reprimand from the girls, just approaching like it was a routine. Instead of sitting several seats away like he usually did, he plopped down directly across from Dib, who raised an eyebrow. “If you think I’m gonna give you more food, you’re out of luck.”

“ _I’m_ not the one who wants more food,” Zim snorted, and on cue, a pair of turquoise optics peered over the table and fixated on his tray.

“I want a biscuit!” shrieked Gir’s voice.

Zim groaned. “Gir, we’re running low on food, and there’s none to waste on someone who doesn’t need to eat! Besides, I don’t have a biscuit!”

“I WANT A BISCUIT!” Gir’s voice bordered on a wail now. “GIMME BISCUIT NOW! NOW NOW NOW!”

“I TOLD YOU I DON’T HAVE ONE!”

Gir devolved into wordless screams, jumping up and down, stomping his feet, kicking the table, dropping on the ground and rolling back and forth among the rust and food residue. Dib stared, and he could tell without looking that Mala and the girls were also staring with varying levels of incredulity and annoyance. This went on for maybe ten seconds before Zim growled and grumbled and finally burst out, “ALL RIGHT, Gir, take this!”

He tossed a chunk of the same purple stuff that Dib was eating down towards Gir. It landed on the ground, but Gir didn’t seem to care; he bent down on all fours and scarfed it down as if he was an actual dog.

Zim sighed and looked down sadly at his significantly diminished lunch, then took a bite for himself. “That’ll keep him quiet for a while, I hope,” he muttered.

“Are you gonna…I dunno…be okay?” asked Dib awkwardly.

Zim looked up at him, seemingly amused. “Zim will not starve,” he said. “Irkens can go for several weeks without food, living off of the stored energy in our PAKs. Otherwise, I would have wasted away long ago on your filthy and culinary-impaired planet!”

“Oh. That’s cool, I guess.” Dib couldn’t help adding, “But you weren’t exactly wasting away when you were eating at my dad’s house every day.”

Zim stuck an invisible nose in the air. “Your Dib-father almost redeems Earth’s terrible, terrible cuisine.. _almost_.”

“Yeah, right,” scoffed Dib. “You liked his food, admit it. You ate so much that you were starting to get chubby!” He stretched across the table and poked Zim in the belly with his fork. Zim’s eyes widened in indignation — and then he stretched across with his own fork and started poking in return. The two of them stayed like that for a moment, their utensils clashing in a flurry of pokes and prods…until Dib’s lips curled, Zim’s antennae twitched, and the two of them fell back into their seats, laughing.

Zim’s laugh sounded different, Dib realized as he settled down, strange somehow. It took him a moment to realize why: Zim’s ordinary laugh was harsh and barking, the sound of evil triumphant. _This_ laughter, on the other hand, sounded like Zim was actually, genuinely enjoying something.

“Oh my god, you two,” grumbled Gaz, turning away from them. “Get a room.”

Dib’s smile vanished, while Zim, missing the human idiom, said, “Eh? Zim already has a room.”

“Then take your _boyfriend_ there and quit bothering me,” she retorted, reaching into her bag of cheese puffs.

Dib pressed his hands against his face, his fingers warming to blush temperature. Why did people keep saying things like that…?!

The ship’s computer interrupted with a cheerful chime over the intercom, echoed a moment later on somebody’s communicator. Mala, who was sitting at the head of the girls’ table with no food in front of her, sprang out of her chair. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Excellent! We’re finally approaching Groceria!”

Responses of “Good!” and “about time,” and “Finally, we’re going to get some real food,” blended together in the galley. Mala quickly stood up on top of her seat, which was hardly necessary, since she already towered over everyone in the room. “I’d like to thank you all for being patient with our low supplies,” she announced. “I promise, tonight I’ll cook us all a nice big dinner!”

The Irkens in the room pattered out applause, and Dib joined in, mouth watering at the thought even though he’d just eaten.

“As I’m sure you all know, we don’t have an excess of time to waste,” she continued. “To help us finish this shopping trip as quickly as possible, I’ve decided to divide you all into teams. Each team will be responsible for grabbing items from one area of Groceria, working off of a list that I’ll provide for you. I’ll give you your assignments now so that we can leave right after lunch. Any questions?”

“Are we really that pressed for time?” Dib piped up. “I mean, it’s just a grocery store.”

“A grocery store the size of a planet, you moronic rotting meat-brain!” shouted Zim.

“Zim,” Mala said sharply. “There’s no need to be rude. But yes, Groceria is extremely large. It could take days for one person to cover the entire store on foot! So, we’re going to form teams of three.” She placed her hands on her hips, surveying the Kri members. “Hmm…Skoodge, Tee, and Blis, you’re the first team.”

Blis sighed. “Why do I always get stuck with the dirty space hippie?”

“I’m not a dirty space hippie!” snipped Tee. “Just because I recognize non-sentient creatures are _clearly_ superior to intelligent life doesn’t mean that—”

“Next team,” Mala said, cutting them off. “Tenn, Tak, and…” She pursed her lips. “…Gaz, you’ve proven yourself to be very well-behaved. You can go with them. I’m obligated to get you home safe, but I trust Tak to make sure that no harm comes to you.”

“She tried to kill me once,” commented Gaz noncommittally, as if this was nothing but a minor transgression.

Tak gave a dismissive flap of her hand. “That was before. If Elite Mala wants me to keep you safe, then I will defend you as I would a fellow soldier, even in the most dangerous situations.”

Gaz flashed her a thumbs-up.

“As for you two…” said Mala, turning her emerald-tinted gaze on Zim and Dib.

Dib held up his hands defensively, certain that he already knew what was coming next. “I know, I know. We’re staying here, right?”

But she shook her head briskly. “I don’t think so. Anytime I don’t keep an eye on you boys, you always manage to get into trouble somehow. So you two are coming with me.”

“Aww, Mameen!” Zim protested. “Nobody wants to go grocery shopping with their mother!”

“That’s just too bad, because I’m not about to let you out of my sight.” She clasped her hands in front of her chest and redirected her attention back to the entire room. “Please keep in mind that we’re working off of a tight budget, so if you see something you want that isn’t on your list, you’ll need to submit it to me for approval. Oh, one last thing: feel free to bring your SIR units with you on this trip, to help cover more ground. Any questions?”

“Yes — how could you do this to Zim?!” moaned the duke of third person dramatically.

Apparently there were no _actual_ questions, because everyone quickly polished off the final crumbs of their lunches, found their teams, and watched from the bridge as the Kri ship completed its slow descent to the docking ring of Groceria.

* * *

That was how Dib came to find himself in a cavernous grocery store from beyond the stars, accompanied by Zim, Zim’s adoptive mother, and Zim’s diminutive robot minion.

Groceria reminded him of nothing so much as one of those big box stores, except that instead of a big box, it was a _humungous_ box. Contrary to the name, it didn’t just sell groceries — although it did include a butcher shop, a deli, a bakery, its own café, and countless aisles jam-packed with everything from breakfast to algal symbionts. But there were also departments catering to office supplies, goods for the alien homeowner, spaceship parts, and a number of things that he couldn’t identify. It didn’t take long for him to understand why Mala had needed to organize this trip in a way that would cover as much ground as possible. That also meant that he finally got to see the SIR units who’d been sitting inactive in the stateroom for the entire ship. There was Mimi, who he knew already; Skoodge’s SIR unit, introduced as Cappy; and even Tenn, much to his surprise, still retained one, which she called Splam.

“Why don’t you two have SIRs?” he’d asked Blis and Tee.

Tee had sniffed disdainfully and responded, “I do have one. But I left them to guard my stash.” She wouldn’t elaborate on what her _stash_ was.

“And you?” he’d asked Blis.

“Do I look like an Invader?” she’d retorted. “Why would they give me a SIR unit?”

Now, with the ship docked and Mala’s unseen SIR, Chip, left to guard it, they were threading their way through the frozen food section of Groceria. Dib had gleaned that she was covering this area herself because it contained the most items from her list, and she could therefore ensure that the majority of her supplies were purchased correctly. Zim had initially hitched a ride on the back of the self-propelled hovercart, but by this time they’d been down a dozen aisles, and Mala dragged the cart to a halt. “Get off of there, Zim. All the weight is starting to interfere with the hovering capabilities.”

“I’m not that heavy!” Zim complained.

Dib couldn’t resist the opportunity to toss out a barb. “Maybe you are. I told you that you were getting chubby from eating all my dad’s food!”

Zim reached out and shoved Dib lightly. Dib shoved him back. He shoved Dib harder, and this time Dib stumbled backward, ramming sideways into Gir (who didn’t even notice) before bouncing off of the closest freezer like a pinball machine striking a bumper, until he finally lost his footing and plopped down onto the scuffed linoleum floor. A couple of aliens passing through the aisle stared at them, perplexed.

“Victory! Victory for Zim!” Zim pumped both arms into the air…and then did something that Dib didn’t expect: he offered his hand to help Dib up. Dib hesitated, expecting another “attack”…but Zim had reached out so absently, like it was an instinct, that he relented and accepted the boost. For one second, or perhaps two, he found himself eye-to-eye with Zim, their hands clasped, a miniature recreation of those intense few moments on Libraria when they were on the ground together…

Then Zim grinned, declared, “Made you look!” and shoved Dib into the freezer again.

“Boys,” chided Mala. “This isn’t the time or place for roughhousing.”

They straightened themselves up and followed her, but Dib made sure to poke his tongue out at Zim, and then Zim had to do the same thing, and they kept it up all the way down the aisle.

“I want that one!” Gir suddenly shouted, flattening his face against the nearest freezer door and pointing at a colorful package.

Zim yanked at his shoulder. “ _No,_ Gir. That one’s not on Mameen’s shopping list.”

Gir almost seemed about to concede…but then he scooted half an inch to the right, pointing at the item right next to the one he’d just abandoned. “I want _that_ one!”

“That one isn’t on the list either!”

While Gir began to whine, Mala rummaged around in her pocket for her handheld communicator, apparently reminded by the discussion to actually check the list in question. She scrolled down a little and groaned. “I forgot to grab the Vort dogs from aisle 798.” She looked up; the ticker-text scrolling by above the freezers read AISLE 804. “We’d better go and grab them before we get any further away.”

“Aww, MAMEEN!” complained Zim, his whining almost harmonizing with Gir’s. “I don’t want to walk all the way back over there!”

She inhaled deeply. “Zim, this trip would go by much faster without you complaining every step of the way.”

“This trip would go by much faster if you weren’t constantly dragging me backwards and DESTROYING MY PROGRESS!”

Mala pinched the base of her antenna, in a gesture that reminded Dib of the way that some human adults would pinch the bridge of their nose in exasperation. “I suppose I could run back and grab the Vort dogs…but can I really trust you two to stay here and not get into trouble?”

“Yes, yes,” Zim said dismissively. “Just go, Mameen! Go and bring back frozen meat of questionable origin, so that Zim may focus on the ever-more important subject of proving myself to the new Tallest!”

“I’ll unpack that one later,” she said. “Okay, stay here and _don’t move_. That goes for all three of you!”

Gir, who had been scaling the side of the hovercart like a rock climber ascending a cliff face, took her instructions literally: he suddenly and completely froze, falling to the scuffed floor tiles with a clang.

Zim dragged his SIR unit out of the way hurriedly, and Mala hesitantly started on her way, frequently shooting glances over her shoulder to make sure that trouble hadn’t overtaken the boys as soon as her back was turned. Finally, she rounded the corner to the previous aisle and vanished from sight.

Dib stood stiffly against one of the freezer doors, the glass leaching coldness into the back of his head, trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible; he’d do almost anything to avoid a repeat of what had happened on Libraria. Mala had forgiven him for that, had treated him with compassion in a way that no adult — actually, no _person_ — ever had before. Now, in the same way that he’d spent most of his life striving for his father’s approval, he was determined to show her that he could be trusted to follow her orders and not cause trouble, that he was more than just some human kid who pestered her and ruined all her plans. It suddenly struck him as a little odd that he’d be feeling so eager to please a grown-up he hadn’t known for that long, and an Irken at that, but Mala was no stranger…and it was becoming increasingly clear to him that Irkens were more than simply the evil aliens he had believed them to be.

This thought naturally led to him sneaking a sidelong glance at Zim, who was fortunately also not doing anything that would get them into trouble, just arguing with Gir that it was okay if he moved around a _little_ bit. Aside from them, and from a bulky green guy in a flight suit with his face sticking out of his chest who was sauntering slowly past the freezers, the aisle was empty. Dib watched Zim debate the finer points of literal interpretation with a cybernetic three-year-old until he realized that he’d probably been looking long enough for it to get awkward, and then he quickly averted his gaze, not wanting to get caught staring.

 _Get a room_ , Gaz had said, not-so-subtly alluding to a certain type of relationship that Dib never had and never would have with Zim. Of course not. The very idea was preposterous…so why did thinking of it cause his skin to prickle in a way that was simultaneously warm and cold?

“Excuse me,” interjected a gruff voice, drawing Dib’s attention to more practical matters.

The bulky guy with a chest-face had stopped in front of them, removing one hand (of two) from the handle of his hovercart. Dib glanced around, but the aisle was still empty apart from them.

“Eh?” Zim had been scooping Gir off of the ground, and now he straightened up to face the stranger with Gir still dangling heavily in his arms. “What do you want?”

“Are you Irken Zim?” asked the stranger.

Dib could actually see Zim puff up a little, like someone had just topped him off with a bicycle pump. “You have heard of Zim?! Of course you have, I’m the greatest soldier that the Irken Empire has ever known. But that’s Invader Zim to you, large filthy!”

The stranger nodded. “Okay,” he said nonchalantly. “I just wanted to make sure.”

Then he whipped out a handheld blaster and leveled it straight at the boys.

Dib jumped, instinctively backing up until the freezer door was squashed against his back. Zim’s antennae flattened, but he didn’t back down, instead baring his teeth at the stranger. “Eh?! What is the meaning of this?! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Stay still and shut up,” commanded the stranger in a cold, flat voice. “By the order of the Tallest, you and all other members of the band of fugitives known as the Kri Society are hereby placed under arrest. You will be taken to Judgmentia for immediate existence evaluation. You have the right to get seriously messed up if you don’t come quietly.”

Something pointy constricted around Dib’s arm, and he jumped again before he realized that it was one of Zim’s hands, clamped so tightly on his arm that the sharp fingers dug into his sleeve. Zim’s other arm was clasping Gir against him protectively, and his lips had drawn back, revealing a full mouth of bared teeth. “Lies!” he hissed. “Zim will never come quietly! I will not concede to a filthy, non-Irken LIAR who tells such LIES about the Empire!”

“Uh, Zim?” said Dib, his voice almost a squeak. “Maybe, in the interest of not dying, we should listen to the guy currently pointing a gun at us…”

Chest-face sneered. “Listen to you friend, Irken Zim. It’s true.”

Dib waited for Zim’s declaration that they were _not_ friends — a point that either of them insisted on making whenever their relationship was mistaken. Except this time, the protest would be cut short by a high-power blast that Zim might survive, but that Dib, who belonged to a relatively more fragile species, probably wouldn’t.

He moved his gaze back to Zim, deciding to end his life on a marginally more pleasant image than some green chest-face guy jabbing a gun in his face. Zim’s posture was all tension, taut and ready to snap, but he didn’t move except for a very faint quivering in his antennae. The stranger primed his gun, taking both hands off of the hovercart to aim it as precisely as possible…

And that was when Zim sprang. His PAK legs whipped out, his arms hoisted both Dib and Gir off the ground, and the next thing Dib knew, he’d been dumped inside chest-face’s hovercart — which was now careening down the aisle at a rate of speed that even the most hurried shopper wouldn’t have dared to attempt.

Dib felt the flesh of his cheeks pull back slightly from the extreme G-forces. Behind them, chest-face roared, lumbering after them; a misplaced energy blast sizzled by the cart, missing by inches, and blew a hole in a colorful end cap display of various chips. The freezer aisle gave way to little cardboard boxes, rocketing by so fast that it was impossible to make out their labels, and then…

“WALL!” screamed Dib.

Zim lowered two of his PAK legs and dragged them along the ground, producing a nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek and a spray of sparks, and used his remaining two legs to push off of the approaching wall. The cart turned at a ninety-degree angle, and five seconds later, it had picked up even more speed than before.

“Where are we going?!” Dib shouted, doing his best to turn around in the basket with all the g-forces tugging at his body.

Zim had his eyes narrowed and his teeth gritted, guiding the hovercart like a missile and paying no attention to the startled customers who were forced to leap out of their path. “Away!”

“We should find Mala! That guy said he was going after the whole Kri Society! And we’ve lost him by now—”

No sooner were the words out of Dib’s mouth then he noticed that not all of the shoppers who saw them were frantically dodging. Others, in the moments before their faces whipped by in a blur, appeared to be staring at the rampaging hovercart with cold, calculating eyes. He had barely begun to process what this meant when a pair of humanoid aliens apparently constructed entirely from a crystalline substance, one blue and one purple, stepped out in front of them with outstretched arms to form a barricade that was literally rock-solid.

“FLIRK!” shrieked Zim, doing his best to swerve the cart. With only his PAK and meager weight to control it, the steering was crude at best, and they zigzagged unevenly towards the two apprehenders. The crystalline aliens ended up being knocked aside by the violent jerking motions, all while Dib rattled around in the basket like a rock in a tumbler. The entire maneuver was punctuated by Gir scream-giggling maniacally, treating their frenzied escape like a roller coaster ride.

Dib wound his fingers through the wire-grating sides of the basket and held on for dear life. Zim pulled another sharp turn, and the hovercart teetered dangerously to one side, almost parallel to the ground for a few moments before snapping upright. As they careened through the home goods section, he cried, “Did we lose them?!”

“Yeah, but…!” Dib swallowed, his eyes fixated on their surroundings. “I think there’s a lot more where that came from!”

He could see them everywhere now, gliding among the normal shoppers like wolves among sheep, cold-eyed and heavily armed: apprehenders. Some were tall and skinny, some short and squat; some had dozens of limbs, and others had no limbs at all. But they were united by a common gait, and by the fact that all of them clearly wanted to inflict some serious bodily harm on the fleeing boys. Fleetingly, it struck Dib as odd that for supposed emissaries of the new Tallest, there wasn’t a single Irken among them. He thought that he might have caught a glimpse of a PAK or two, but with everything speeding by, it was hard to tell if those PAKs were attached to Irkens of unusual physique or just—

And that was when Dib realized that Zim had been so busy gaping at their sudden glut of enemies that he hadn’t bothered to look where he was going. Still moving at full speed, the hovercart plowed into a shelf set along the sturdy back wall of the store, smashing into a large display of bathroom products. The front of the basket crumpled like an empty soda can, and Zim, Dib, and Gir were all hurled into an avalanche of toilet paper rolls, coming to a rest among the pile.

Gir sat up, a coil of toilet paper twirling around his antenna. “Let’s do that again!” he squealed.

“Let’s not,” groaned Zim, his PAK legs scrabbling to dig him out from where he’d been partially buried.

Dib wasn’t sure that any of them were going to be doing _anything_ again. Two of their apprehenders were approaching them with an almost nonchalant gait, weapons drawn. He glanced from side to side, but the wall prevented them from moving forward, and every nearby aisle would almost certainly be flanked by someone else waiting to blow their brains out. They were trapped.

He patted down his coat, but felt nothing but his cell phone, his notepad, and a pen; even his laptop was back on the Kri ship. He turned to Zim desperately. “Please tell me you have something we can use to stop these guys!”

Zim, still held aloft by his spider legs, frantically began clawing through his pockets and his PAK in search of anything that stood a chance against a small army. Various toylike lasers and tools emerged, all of which looked like they’d be melted into goo by nothing more than a mean look. He pulled out an oval-shaped device with a tiny optical port at one end and groaned. “It’s no use! All I have is my standard repair kit and this portable directed vibration illusory generator!”

Dib dared to tear his eyes away from their pursuers for a second. “Directed vibration illusory…?”

“Generator.” Zim scowled. “Don’t you know anything, human? It exploits a flaw in the brain-meats of intelligent life wherein certain vibrational frequencies cause hallucinations! The generator can be pointed at any object to make it look like something terrifying and disgusting! Ingenious, really — it was invented by this Irken scientist who—”

“Master?” asked Gir. “Can I go play with the new friends?” He pointed to the pair of apprehenders who were now mere feet away from them, close enough to see the wrinkles in their cheeks caused by their self-assured smirks.

Dib glanced between Gir and the little device in Zim’s hand — and a plan occurred to him in an insight like a bright flash of mental lightning. It was risky, it quite probably wouldn’t work, and he had no other choice but to try it.

He snatched the vibration illusory generator from Zim’s hand, aimed the optical port at Gir, and jammed down its button.

He’d thought that, if the generator worked at all, it would be like a hologram was suddenly cast over Gir, but the effects were actually far more insidious than that. Darkness flickered at the corners of his vision; his consciousness seemed to warp a little, making the world feel ever-so-slightly unreal. It was the same feeling that crept across him when he was hunting ghosts and knew that he was getting close to his specter, except more intense, and sustained rather than coming and going in short bursts. And when he looked past his arm at Gir, what he saw was…something else. A disturbing combination of mismatched organic and mechanical parts, an indeterminate number of limbs, eyes like staring into the darkest depths of the ocean. It drove a needle of primordial fear into his heart, even though he knew exactly what was going on and that there was nothing to fear; the whole package of perceptions brought on by the generator was just… _overwhelming_.

For their apprehenders, who didn’t realize what was happening, the spookiness was even stronger. They froze less than a foot away from Gir, expressions twisting into confusion tinged with fear, visibly questioning their own senses. They finally lifted their weapons, slower on the draw than before, uncertain even when faced with something much smaller than themselves. One of them moved to shoot, and…

“Hi new friends!” shouted Gir, his voice sounding slightly distorted under the influence of the generator. “Let’s go swimmin’!” He ran a few steps forward — and the apprehenders both screamed like bloodless cowards, turning on their heels and taking off in the other direction.

Zim stared at Dib, openmouthed…and then he began to cackle. The sound was an odd combination of the genuine laughter from earlier, and Zim’s more customary, nasty-alien-Invader laugh. Maybe it only sounded different to Dib because this time he was in on the joke.

“Did you hear them scream?!” demanded Zim after several seconds of laughter, his adrenaline-drunk grin matching Dib’s. “AMAZING!”

As Dib’s thumb lifted off of the button and the effects of the generator evaporated, he found himself laughing as well, thankfully able to ignore the twinge of hysteria in it. “I guess that was pretty cool, huh?”

“More than _pretty_ cool!” Zim grabbed Dib’s shoulder and squeezed excitedly. “Nothing’s better than watching your subjugated enemies flee in terror from you! It’s even more satisfying than when helpless civilians are running and screaming at the very sight of you!”

“Aww, they went away,” said the now-decidedly-not-nightmarish Gir, pouting in the direction that their would-be apprehenders had gone.

Coming down from the initial rush, Dib’s smile faded away. “Zim,” he started. “That first guy who tried to shoot us said that they were after the whole Kri Society — and there were a ton of them around here. Maybe everyone else didn’t get away as easily as we did.”

Zim gasped. “Mameen! …oh, and Skoodge. And…those girls that I really don’t care about.”

“We should still go make sure they’re okay,” insisted Dib. “And if they’re not, we can use the illusory generator to save them, too. I mean, we’ve got Gir, and they’ve got their SIR units too, so—”

“Launching an all-out attack on the enemies’ psyches?” Zim grinned from ear to ear…or from antenna to antenna. “Oh, that’s _devious,_ Dib. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you!”

Dib didn’t ordinarily consider himself devious, but… “They deserve it. Don’t they?”

“Couldn’t agree more!” Zim’s grasp moved from Dib’s shoulder to his hand, prompting a quick flush of pleasure…and then another flush of the more typical sort as he wondered why he’d found that gesture _pleasurable_. “Now hurry up and let’s find another cart!”

* * *

Five minutes later, they were on the move again, their speed still quite high but at least slightly more manageable. Zim leaned over the hovercart’s handle, shouting, “Move it, move it, out of the way!!” at the shoppers who sprang away from the rampaging vehicle and often left a trail of abandoned groceries in their wake.

They found Skoodge, Tee, and Blis in a hardware aisle, confronting half a dozen attackers of various species and not having a very easy time of it. They were at a distinct disadvantage since, out of the trio, only Skoodge had any actual combat experience; Tee was clinging to a high shelf with her PAK legs, trying to stay out of harm’s way, while Blis apparently couldn’t even do that, as she was hunkering down under the guard of Skoodge’s SIR unit, Cappy. Skoodge was doing his best to fend off their enemies, but he was greatly outmatched in both numbers and equipment, and they were all backed into a corner without much hope for victory.

Then along came Dib, Zim, and Gir, barreling into the scene with all the timeliness and grace of a dump truck interrupting a Civil War reenactment.

“Would you like to do the honors this time?” asked Dib, holding out the illusory generator, which he’d been clutching securely in his hand during the bumpy ride.

“With pleasure!” Zim agreed, snatching it up. “Hey, Gir! Go play with those big guys who are hurting Skoodge!”

Gir eagerly clambered out of the basket and ran towards the battle, arms outstretched, and Zim expertly speared him with the optical port end of the generator. Immediately, Dib felt his perceptions beginning to shudder, turning Gir from an oblivious toddler-bot into a dark, jagged creature lurching menacingly at the attackers. His already manic-sounding giggle created a nice counterpart to the image. It certainly made an impression on the guys harassing Skoodge and Cappy; some of them fled immediately while others simply wheeled around in confusion and horror, abandoning the battle for long seconds and leaving themselves wide open to attack. Dib gave Skoodge a lot of credit: he clearly didn’t know what was going on, but as soon as he realized that he’d been given an opening, he lashed out with his PAK legs, making short work of anyone who hadn’t spinelessly scattered. As they spun off in different directions, Dib got a good view of an aggressor’s retreating back, and he stiffened: there _was_ a PAK there, smaller than normal, clinging incongruously between the shoulder blades of an alien who was clearly not Irken. But the moment passed so quickly that he didn’t have a chance to mention it.

Blis untucked her head from beneath her arms. “Oh, we’re not dead?” she said, sounding disappointed — until she saw Gir and added, “Maybe there’s hope for death after all.”

Zim released the generator button, and the shuddery overlay vanished from Dib’s vision. “No, no, it’s only Gir! I know that the directed vibration illusory generator can be quite convincing to those of feeble mind, but it’s perfectly harmless!”

“Wow, thanks!” exclaimed Skoodge. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold them off!”

“Yes, we have saved you,” agreed Zim self-importantly. Something struck Dib through the pompous tone, though: the word _we._ Zim hadn’t said “ _I_ have saved you”; he’d said “ _we_ have saved you.” Did he mean himself and Gir, or…?

…there was no time to waste being even mildly sentimental. Gaz, Mala, and nearly half the Kri Society were still missing, possibly being chased around the store by blaster-wielding Irken wannabes right now, and it was better to complete the rescue while the apprehenders were still in the dark about what the illusory generator actually did.

As Tee spider-climbed her way down from the shelf and Blis picked herself up the ground, Skoodge asked hurriedly, “Where’s Mameen? I thought she was with you…!”

“She left us to go grab something she forgot, and that’s when we got attacked,” Dib said. “We have to save her and everyone else…!”

“Eh, I’d be okay with just saving Mameen,” commented Zim.

Dib scowled. “Zim! My little sister is with Tak and Tenn!”

“Okay, okay!” groaned Zim, as if Dib wanting to save a family member was some kind of frivolous indulgence that he was loath to allow.

“I’ll help this time!” exclaimed Skoodge, grabbing his SIR unit’s hand and thrusting it upwards as if the two of them were high-fiving. “You can use your illusion-thingy on Cappy, too! After all, two vibrationally-generated eldritch abominations are better than one, right?!”

Within five minutes, they’d regrouped, Dib and Gir bouncing along in their hovercart with Zim steering, while Skoodge and Tee piloted their own supply-packed cart, Blis and Cappy crammed in among the groceries. According to Skoodge, the girls had been assigned to the perishable goods section of the store, so they sped towards the opposite side of Groceria where the bakery, deli, and meat market were located.

As it turned out, the girls had appropriated a large tank filled with vaguely lobster-looking creatures as a rampart, fending off a dozen attackers from the meat counter that they were using as a barricade. From what Dib could tell in the glimpses he snatched from the rocking, careening hovercart, they appeared to be winning. Tak and Tenn worked in tandem with their SIR units to disable the weapons and bodies of anyone who got too close to them, and Gaz held her ground behind the counter, using a makeshift slingshot to catapult chunks of frozen flesh into the softer parts of her would-be apprehenders. Zim, however, was neither patient enough to await the outcome of the battle nor ever inclined to let well enough alone; he sent Gir into the fray when they were within fifty yards of the fight — if literally picking Gir up and flinging him into the midst of an ongoing skirmish could be counted as _sending_. Cappy trotted forward too, almost as an afterthought.

Zim aimed the generator and pressed the button, and the world shuddered, but by now Dib was almost used to the sensation of shadows pulsing at the corners of his vision. The girls, on the other hand, all looked up immediately, startled if not outright surprised. It was Tak who first realized what was going on; when the attackers all inevitably turned to gape in horror at the approaching SIR units, she and Mimi sprang into action without wasting a second, tearing through the group so quickly that her enemies seemed to collapse like dominoes, one after the other. Whether they were dead or simply knocked out, Dib didn’t know and mostly didn’t care, as he was growing disoriented from watching so much happen in such a short amount of time and was sort of glad that it was all coming to an end.

Zim pumped his arms into the air triumphantly. “Rejoice, you inferior ones, for Zim has saved you!”

“We didn’t need saving!” snapped Tak. “We were doing perfectly well without you!”

“ZIM HAS SAVED YOU!”

Tenn and Gaz hopped out from behind the meat counter, making their way gingerly around the bodies on the floor. “What was that, anyway?” asked Gaz. “You made Gir look all creepy.” Even as she said this, she didn’t sound especially affected by it, her tone remaining as blasé as ever. “Was it a hologram?”

Dib shook his head. “Not exactly. It was—”

“An irrelevant distraction,” interjected Tak. “No competent soldier would ever need to resort to such cheap gimmicks!”

“Eh?” Zim lowered his arms. “What is this ingratitude?! You would have been pulverized into a purple smear had it not been for ZIIIIM!”

“Actually, Zim,” Dib piped up, “they did seem to be handling it pretty well on their own—”

“SILENCE, HUMAN! ZIM IS THE SAVIOR OF THE DOOKIE KRI SOCIETY!”

“Not exactly,” said a guttural voice from somewhere behind them.

Dib spun around as best as the confines of the shopping cart would allow, and his gaze as well as everyone else’s landed on a hulking figure emerging from behind a mound of fallen products in a nearby aisle. He immediately recognized chest-face guy, who must have either recovered from the shock of being faced with an illusory threat or simply not been fooled in the first place. An even larger blaster than before stayed level with the group as chest-face advanced on them.

“Awww! Master, look!” exclaimed Gir. “Our friend is back!”

Zim’s face had changed from pride and indignation to grim dismay in a hurry, and he clamped his hand on Gir’s shoulder, dragging him back into a more protective position. Skoodge and the girls shifted into similarly defensive stances, but no one drew a weapon, probably afraid of provoking chest-face into obliterating them all with a single trigger pull.

“That’s a cute party trick,” chest-face sneered, “but it’s not going to work anymore. You should have come quietly when I gave you the chance. Now it looks like all I’ll be delivering to the Tallest is your dead bodies. Oh, well…”

Zim couldn’t keep his mouth shut, even under pain of death. Then again, after the chaos they’d wreaked, there probably wasn’t much hope of them getting out alive no matter what they said. “Why do you take the name of the Tallest in vain?!” he demanded. “You are not an Irken! No inferior soldier like yourself would ever be trusted with the capture of dissidents!”

Chest-face smiled coldly. “Your ignorance truly knows no bounds. You really haven’t been keeping up-to-date with the Irken news, have you? The Tallest is—”

And that was when his eyes bulged fit to burst from their sockets, his massive body went into convulsions, and his mucus-green flesh emitted smoke that smelled of burning rubber and rotten fish. Crackling tendrils of electricity squeezed his limbs, only releasing their hold when the double-bladed end of a long rod jammed into his side and knocked him down among the piles of his cohorts on the floor. When he toppled over, the holder of the rod was revealed: Mala.

“You do _not_ threaten _my_ children like that!” she seethed, her hands clenched tight around a rubber grip on her weapon. Dib had no idea what it was — some kind of staff with two crooked blades at the business end, obviously capable of dealing a nasty electric shock — and he didn’t get a very good look at it before chest-face twitched and Mala drove it down into his back again. He flailed for a moment before going limp.

When Dib looked at her face, the searing fury he saw in her expression shocked him more than practically anything else during this disaster of a shopping trip. Mala, the tolerant and gentle leader, momentarily appeared to be so crazed with bloodlust that he thought she might run chest-face right through with her electric staff, just to punish him for having the nerve. It was a jolting reminder of the fact that, kind and compassionate or not, she was still a battle-hardened soldier of a species renown for their relentless violence. But then her eyes caught Dib’s, and her expression melted into one of urgent concern that seemed more appropriate for her.

“Is everyone all right?” she asked hurriedly, collapsing her staff into a small cylinder and slotting it into her PAK. “Zim, Skoodge—Dib and Gaz…?!”

“We’re okay, Mala,” Dib answered, and Gaz flicked her a thumbs-up in the background. “Um…I’m sorry that we didn’t stay in that aisle to wait for you, but—”

Mala shushed him, bending down to squeeze his shoulder. “Oh, honey, that wasn’t your fault! I was so reckless, just assuming that the Empire wasn’t interested in us — I never should have left you alone like that.” Her hands tilted up his face, moving it back and forth in search of marks. "You’re sure you’re not hurt…?”

Dib could only make a vaguely surprised noise in response. He’d been through way worse scrapes than this, but this was the first time that anybody had gotten fluttery and hand-wringy over the possibility that he’d been injured. He was more accustomed to adults staring right through any bruises or breaks he’d accumulated during his misadventures with Zim.

Finally, Mala pulled back, apparently satisfied. “You look all right. But if you’re hurting later, make sure you tell me! Sometimes the adrenaline can override the pain for a little while, you know…actually, if anything, I’m fairly impressed that all of you managed to hold your own so well. Did you just outrun them?”

Before anyone else could get a word in, Zim shouted, “We used THIS!” and rushed forward to boast of his ingenuity with the illusory generator. And then Skoodge had to talk about being cornered in the hardware section, and Tak had to describe her group’s valiant defense of the meat counter, but the words were starting to slide from Dib’s mind, turning into a meaningless background buzz. He glanced at the chest-face guy on the ground, searching for one of those little PAKs that he thought he’d seen before, but the guy had landed belly-up…and mentioning it to Mala would just be one more complication that would keep them here. Dib was done with Groceria; he just wanted to go home. Or, well, back to the Kri ship, which was starting to feel more and more like home the longer he spent with this little group.

* * *

After they’d checked out (at a register as far from the chaos as possible, mentioning nothing to anybody about leaving a trail of unconscious attackers in their wake, with Mala glaring daggers at anyone who so much as looked at them funny) Dib found himself beside Zim once again, shelving the fruits of their labors in the galley. As hungry as he’d been before, the stacks of frozen dinners and ready-to-cook boxed meals hardly seemed worth all the trouble they’d gone through, and he wanted to finish the job as quickly as possible before going back to the stateroom to wind down by himself. Zim, however, didn’t seem tired at all — on the contrary, their narrow escape seemed to have energized him to the bursting point, and he wouldn’t shut up about how incredible it had all been.

“That generator!” he ranted, haphazardly stuffing boxes into to the freezer. “It was ingenious! Completely ingenious!” He paused, and it took Dib a few seconds to realize that Zim was staring at him meaningfully. Waiting for agreement…?

“Uh, yeah,” said Dib.

“I don’t think I would have thought to direct it at Gir!” continued Zim. “I would have gone for something bigger, more threatening…but your instincts didn’t let us down! After all, what’s more disturbing than Gir, eh?!”

Dib must have been tired, because it took him several moments longer to understand that he was being complimented, earnestly and apparently without any self-consciousness on Zim’s part. He was surprised by how abashed it made him feel. “Hey, it’s not like I did all the work,” he said awkwardly. “You’re the one that had the generator, after all.”

“True, true,” agreed Zim, puffing out his chest. If he had reached around right then and literally patted himself on the back, Dib would not have been surprised. “Our truce has been more fruitful than Zim could ever have imagined. Perhaps it’s more than just a truce…what would you call this, Dib-thing?”

Dib blinked, taken off-guard by the question. “Uh…working together?”

“No, that can’t be right!” Zim shook his head emphatically. “All the other times we worked together, I HATED it! But this time, it was…”

He trailed off. Dib found himself staring into Zim’s face, recalling the various occasions when circumstances had forced them into an alliance: when they were turning into baloney, when they got sucked into Dib’s imagination, when Tak had tried to replace the Earth’s core with snacks…Zim was right in every case; working together had been unbearable then. Sometimes it had felt as though Dib’s skin was literally crawling with disgust at the idea of assisting the enemy, as if some physical part of him would take off to preserve its integrity. But on Groceria, it hadn’t been like that. Yes, it was nerve-wracking, yes, he was tired at the end of it, but for those few moments when they’d first sent the apprehenders packing and Zim had squeezed his shoulders and they’d both laughed, it had been…

“Almost fun,” said Dib softly.

“Right,” said Zim, his voice suddenly subdued.

After another moment, they turned away from one another almost in tandem, returning to shelving the portion of the groceries they’d been assigned. Dib felt his heartbeat bumping in his fingertips, a sensation that reminded him of what he’d experienced when he’d opened his eyes on Libraria to find Zim perched on his chest: some kind of charge had gathered between them, some energy strong enough to make his skin tingle and his breathing speed up. There were no weapons pointing at them, no immediate threat in the vicinity, and yet he felt it all the same.

And this time, he was pretty sure that Zim had felt it, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve officially made it halfway through the fic! It’s been a long journey to get here, but we did it. I hope you enjoyed the more lighthearted part of the story, because starting next time, shit’s about to get real.


End file.
